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THE  PRINCIPLES  OF  THE  FOUNDERS 


sf&rB  m       sts 

ItOS  AfiGELiES,  CAU. 


THE    PRINCIPLES   OF 
THE  FOUNDERS 


BY 


EDWIN   D.   MEAD 


ORATION    BEFORE    THE    CITY    GOVERNMENT    AND    CITIZENS    OF    BOSTON, 
AT    FANEUIL    HALL,  JULY    4,    1903 


BOSTON 

AMERICAN  UNITARIAN  ASSOCIATION 
1903 


COPYRIGHT  1903 
AMERICAN  UNITARIAN  ASSOCIATION 


I 


The  letters  of  Washington,  Jefferson,  and  Franklin,  and 
various  other  citations  were  not  read  in  the  delivery  of  the 
address,  but  are  printed  here  as  the  strong  and  impressive 
confirmations  of  the  positions  taken. 


"  The  late  M.  Guizot  once  asked  me  how  long  I  thought 
our  Republic  would  endure.  I  replied,  '  So  long  as  the  ideas 
of  the  men  who  founded  it  continue  dominant."1" — LOWELL. 

"  Our  city  owes  its  existence  and  its  power  to  principles 
not  of  yesterday,  and  the  deeper  principle  will  always  prevail 
over  whatever  material  accumulations." — EMERSON. 


THE  PRINCIPLES  OF  THE  FOUNDERS 

I -iff  "7  A 

At  the  impressive  New  Voters'  Festival,  held  here  in 
Faneuil  Hall  on  Patriots'  Day,  there  was  nothing  more 
impressive  than  the  words  of  St.  Paul  printed  at  the 
head  of  the  program,  "I  am  a  citizen  of  no  mean 
city,"  emphasized  as  they  were  in  their  application 
to  the  young  citizens  of  Boston  gathered  here  for  that 
consecration  service  by  the  names  of  the  illustrious  men 
in  Boston's  history,  —  Winthrop,  Adams,  Webster, 
Quincy,  Sumner,  Emerson,  Phillips  Brooks,  and  their 
great  associates,  —  inscribed  upon  the  walls.  I  know 
of  nothing  that  can  more  powerfully  inspire  and  com- 
mand the  young  man  as  he  enters  his  political  life 
than  the  consciousness  that  he  belongs  to  a  renowned 
city  and  an  illustrious  Commonwealth,  and  that  he 
takes  his  place  in  the  privileged  ranks  of  a  proces- 
sion conspicuous  and  honored  in  history  and  among 
men. 

"I  am  a  citizen  of  no  mean  city";  "I  am  a 
Roman  !  "  — how  proudly  the  words  ring  out  from  the 
lips  of  Paul  of  Tarsus!  When  he  said,  "I  am  a 
Roman,"  Paul  declared  himself  simply  a  citizen  of  the 
Roman  empire.  How  much  prouder  was  the  word 
upon  the  lips  of  Cicero  or  Caesar,  citizens  of  the  great 
city  itself ! 

"I  am  an  Athenian!  " — how  much  the  word  meant 
in  the  mouth  of  Pericles  or  of  Demosthenes !  how  much 


8  THE  PRINCIPLES  OF  THE  FOUNDERS 

in  it  of  pride,  of  persuasion,  of  obligation  and  high  im- 
perative !  The  thought  of  the  historic  past  commanded 
the  character  of  to-day  and  to-morrow.  As  the  gods 
had  been  with  the  fathers,  so  must  they  be  with  the 
children. 

"Being  the  citizens  of  a  great  city,"  this  was  the 
appeal  of  Pericles  to  the  Athenians  in  the  dark  days  of 
the  Peloponnesian  War,  "and  educated  in  a  temper 
of  greatness,  you  should  not  succumb  to  calamities, 
however  great,  or  darken  the  lustre  of  your  fame." 
His  chief  incitement  to  heroism  in  the  storm  and 
stress  of  the  time  was  gratitude  and  a  sense  of  the 
city's  great  inheritance.  "Our  fathers,  when  they 
withstood  the  Persians,  had  no  such  empire  as  we. 
Not  by  good  fortune  but  by  wisdom,  and  not  by  power 
but  by  courage,  they  repelled  the  barbarian  and  raised 
us  to  our  present  height  of  greatness.  We  must  be 
worthy  of  them."  His  highest  tribute  to  those  who 
fell  at  the  beginning  of  the  war  was  that  ' '  they  were 
worthy  of  Athens."  "I  will  speak  first  of  our  ances- 
tors," he  said  in  his  famous  funeral  speech.  He  told 
how  the  fathers  in  the  generations  had  added  to  then* 
inheritance  and  through  many  struggles  transmitted 
their  empire  to  their  sons  ;  and  he  boasted  with  just 
pride  that  the  sons  themselves  assembled  there  that 
day,  still  most  of  them  in  the  vigor  of  life,  had  chiefly 
done  the  work  of  improvement  and  richly  endowed 
their  city  with  all  things.  "Our  city,"  he  proudly 
said,  "is  thrown  open  to  the  world,  and  we  never 
expel  a  foreigner  or  prevent  him  from  seeing  or  learn- 
ing. Athens  is  the  school  of  Hellas.  We  do  good  to 


THE  PRINCIPLES  OF  THE  FOUNDERS  9 

our  neighbors,  not  upon  a  calculation  of  interest,  but 
in  the  confidence  of  freedom  and  in  a  frank  and  fearless 
spirit."  "We  regard  a  man  who  takes  no  interest 
in  public  affairs  as  a  useless  character  ;  and  if  few  of  us 
are  originators,  we  are  all  sound  judges  of  a  policy." 
He  rejoiced  in  the  mighty  monuments  which  would 
make  Athens  the  wonder  of  succeeding  ages  ;  she  did 
not  need  the  praises  of  Homer  nor  of  any  other  pane- 
gyrist. ' '  Such  is  the  city, "  he  exclaimed,  ' '  for  whose 
sake  these  men  nobly  fought  and  died  ;  in  magnifying 
the  city  I  have  magnified  them  and  men  like  them, 
whose  virtues  made  her  glorious  ;  and  every  one  of 
us  who  survive  should  gladly  toil  on  her  behalf.  I  have 
dwelt  upon  the  greatness  of  Athens  because  I  want  to 
show  you  that  we  are  contending  for  a  higher  prize 
than  those  who  enjoy  none  of  these  privileges.  I  would 
have  you  day  by  day  fix  your  eyes  upon  the  greatness 
of  Athens  until  you  become  filled  with  the  love  of  her  ; 
and  when  you  are  impressed  by  the  spectacle  of  her 
glory,  reflect  that  this  empire  has  been  acquired  by  men 
who  knew  their  duty  and  had  the  courage  to  do  it." 

We  here  in  the  American  Athens,  as  we  like  to  call 
our  dear  old  town,  may  read  these  patriotic  words  of 
the  great  Athenian  statesman  not  only  as  a  striking 
illustration  of  the  present  power  of  an  appeal  to  a 
great  past,  but  as  a  stirring  exposition  of  the  kind  of 
life  and  public  spirit  which  we  would  desire  to  inform 
and  inspire  Boston  to-day  as  they  ennobled  the  Athens 
of  Pericles. 

What  we  find  in  Pericles,  that  also  we  find  in  Demos- 
thenes, and  even  in  more  marked  degree.  His  pride 


10  THE   PRINCIPLES   OF  THE   FOUNDERS 

in  Athens,  his  reverence  for  her  history,  his  devotion 
to  her  ideals,  his  shame  in  her  shame,  his  lofty  sense 
of  the  high  honor  and  severe  duty  of  Athenian  citizen- 
ship, —  this  is  the  key  to  his  life  and  to  the  interpreta- 
tion of  his  whole  public  policy.  He  had  studied  the 
history  of  Athens  like  no  other  of  his  time.  Uniting 
in  his  ideal  picture  of  Athens  all  that  was  noblest  in 
that  history,  he  sought  to  stir  the  reason  and  imagina- 
tion of  his  countrymen  by  it  as  his  own  were  stirred. 
Disinterestedness  and  honor,  the  championship  of  the 
oppressed,  and  all  magnanimous  and  generous  qualities 
were  blended  in  the  ideal  Athens  which  commanded 
his  energies  and  aspirations  ;  and  the  aim  of  his  politi- 
cal life  was  to  make  Athens  ' '  identify  herself  with  her 
best  moments,  and  be  made  to  feel  that  then  she  was 
most  truly  herself."  It  has  been  often  said,  and  justly, 
that  his  great  oration  on  "The  Crown"  is  in  reality 
not  so  much  a  vindication  of  himself  as  a  glowing 
eulogy  on  the  Athens  that  trusted  him.  In  the  "  Phil- 
ippics," as  in  "The  Crown,"  the  argument  is  again 
and  again  an  historical  review,  the  familiar  names  and 
events  of  Athenian  history  being  hurled  at  the  assem- 
bly in  swift  succession,  for  reproof,  for  correction,  for 
instruction  in  righteousness.  If  the  rest  of  the  world 
consented  to  be  slaves,  Athens  at  least  must  do  battle 
for  freedom ;  that  task  and  privilege  had  been  won 
and  bequeathed  to  her  at  great  cost,  through  many 
dangers.  "By  our  fathers  who  met  danger  at  Mara- 
thon ;  by  our  fathers  who  stood  in  the  ranks  at  Platsea ; 
by  our  fathers  who  did  battle  on  the  waters  of  Salamis 
and  Artemision ;  by  all  the  brave  who  sleep  in  tombs 


S  ft- 


ft^ 

THE  PRINCIPLES   OF  THE  FOUNDERS  11 

at  which  their  country  paid  the  last  honors,"  —  by  such 
adjurations  did  he  seek  to  rouse  in  declining  Athens 
the  heroism  of  the  antique  time.  His  heart  burns  with 
shame  that  the  mere  memories  of  her  great  past  should 
not  be  sufficient  to  nerve  Athens  to  successful  resist- 
ance against  the  rude  warrior  from  the  north,  who  had 
been  cradled  and  schooled  in  the  meanest  environment. 
"  Who  would  dare  to  say  that  a  man  born  and  bred  at 
Pella,  a  place  at  that  time  petty  and  obscure,  had  a 
right  to  such  an  innate  grandeur  of  spirit  as  to  aspire 
to  the  empire  of  Greece  and  to  harbor  the  project  in 
his  thoughts  ;  while  you,  Athenians,  who  day  by  day, 
in  every  word  you  hear  and  every  sight  you  see, 
contemplate  the  memorials  of  the  prowess  of  your 
forefathers,  might  be  so  intrinsically  base  as  unin- 
vited and  unforced  to  surrender  to  Philip  the  liberty 
of  Greece?" 

"Great  empires  and  little  minds,"  said  Burke,  "go 
ill  together."  Athens  fell  because  she  had  become  an 
Athens  of  little  minds.  Demosthenes  is  a  tragical 
figure  because  he  is  a  man  of  the  antique  mold  surviv- 
ing in  a  time  not  moved  by  the  antique  motives,  speak- 
ing to  little  minds  the  things  which  only  stir  great  ones. 
When  Guizot  asked  Lowell  how  long  the  American 
Republic  would  endure,  Lowell  answered  rightly:  "  So 
long  as  the  ideas  of  the  men  who  founded  it  continue 
dominant."  Demosthenes  knew  well  that  Athens  could 
stand  only  as  she  was  true  to  the  principles  of  the  fathers, 
not  because  they  were  the  principles  of  the  fathers,  but 
because  the  fathers  had  been  faithful  to  true  principles. 
Athens  was  false  to  these,  and  Athens  fell  ;  but  the 


12  THE  PRINCIPLES  OF  THE  FOUNDERS 

message  of  Demosthenes  to  Athens  remains  a  message 
to  every  republic,  in  every  time.  He  spoke  to  an 
apathetic  Athens,  he  spoke  to  an  Athens  losing  its  con- 
science and  its  will,  no  longer  capable  of  sustained 
effort.  The  people  in  their  assemblies  applauded  fine 
sentiments,  liked  to  hear  laudations  of  their  fathers, 
passed  eloquent  resolutions, — and  shirked  their  duties. 
They  reflected  after  the  event.  They  depended  upon 
leaders  and  left  all  business  and  the  disposal  of  emolu- 
ments to  these,  instead  of  depending  upon  themselves 
and  fighting  their  own  battles  as  formerly.  ' '  In  old 
days,"  Demosthenes  said,  "the  people  was  master  of 
its  statesmen ;  now  it  is  their  servant. "  The  change 
had  brought  corruption  and  venality  in  high  places  and 
in  low.  "Something  there  once  was  in  the  heart  of 
the  masses  which  there  is  not  now,  something  which 
prevailed  over  the  wealth  of  Persia,  which  kept  Greece 
in  freedom,  which  was  unvanquished  in  battle  by  land 
or  sea."  This  secret  force  was  a  hatred  of  bribery. 
' '  New  principles  are  now  imported,  wherewith  Greece 
is  sick  even  to  death.  And  what  are  these  ?  Envy  if 
a  man  has  taken  a  bribe ;  ridicule  if  he  confesses  it ; 
pardon  if  the  guilt  is  proved  ;  hatred  of  those  who  cen- 
sure him."  He  spoke  to  a  materialistic,  money-loving, 
game-loving,  luxury-loving,  flattery-loving  Athens,  and 
an  Athens  seeking  for  fine  interpretations  of  poor  con- 
duct. But  he  was  fearless  and  sincere,  refusing  to 
ignore  or  whitewash  facts,  and  speaking  truth  at  every 
cost.  Nowhere  else  are  the  shortcomings  of  a  people 
more  severely  dealt  with  ;  but  his  severity  is  never  the 
severity  of  the  scold,  but  the  severity  of  faith,  which 


THE  PRINCIPLES  OF  THE  FOUNDERS  13 

ennobles  and  stimulates.  His  politics  is  a  politics  which 
he  can  take  to  the  altar.  ' '  Ye  gods,  inspire  these  men 
with  a  better  mind  and  heart !  Ye  gods,  grant  us  a 
sure  salvation ! "  Every  question  of  public  policy  de- 
pends with  him  on  some  principle  which  has  its  root  in 
morals  ;  and  therefore  with  him  no  noble  policy  could 
be  failure  and  no  ignoble  policy  success.  Surveying 
the  last  struggle  with  Philip  and  its  results,  he  ex- 
claimed :  "I  say  that  if  the  event  had  been  manifest  to 
the  whole  world  beforehand,  if  you  who  never  opened 
your  lips  had  been  ever  so  loud  or  shrill  in  prophecy 
and  protest,  not  even  then  ought  Athens  to  have  for- 
saken this  course,  if  Athens  had  any  regard  for  her 
glory,  or  for  her  past,  or  for  the  ages  to  come." 

The  purest  and  intensest  of  patriots,  Demosthenes 
was  also  one  of  the  broadest ;  and  here  too  he  has  a 
lesson  for  us.  His  devotion  to  Athens  did  not  hinder 
his  devotion  to  Greece.  He  rose  above  every  narrow 
and  provincial  prejudice  and  took  all  Hellas  into  his 
heart.  Washington,  after  the  Revolution,  when  few 
men  in  the  Colonies  could  see  beyond  the  borders  of 
their  own  Massachusetts  or  New  York  or  Virginia,  de- 
clared that  henceforth  the  politics  of  America  must  be 
measured  on  "  a  continental  scale. "  What  vision  that 
witnessed  to,  and  how  much  it  meant,  it  is  hard  for  us 
to-day  to  understand  ;  but  it  meant  much  more  for 
Demosthenes  to  see  and  say  to  the  Athenians  that 
politics  must  be  measured  on  an  Hellenic  scale.  To 
the  Greek  his  town  or  city  was  his  country ;  and  the 
insularity  of  Athens,  Thebes,  or  Sparta  was  vastly 
greater  than  the  mutual  repulsion  of  the  States  under 


14  THE  PRINCIPLES  OF  THE  FOUNDERS 

the  old  Articles  of  Confederation,  or  than  South 
Carolina's  emphasis  upon  State  rights  in  1830  or  1861. 
For  Demosthenes  to  transcend  Athens  meant  almost 
as  much  as  for  us  to  recognize,  as  now  becomes  our 
duty,  that  the  time  has  come  when  no  man  may  longer 
so  construe  his  patriotism  as  to  say  in  the  first  place, 
I  am  an  American,  an  Englishman,  a  Frenchman,  a 
German,  a  Russian,  but  when  all  must  know  them- 
selves in  the  first  place  as  citizens  of  the  world  and 
define  every  narrower  patriotism  in  subordination  to 
that  higher  definition.  Demosthenes  was  accused  by 
JEschines  of  Boeotian  sympathies,  because  he  was  able 
to  do  justice  to  men  beyond  his  own  borders,  for  whom 
his  narrowly  and  vulgarly  patriotic  neighbors  had  only 
jealousy  and  hate.  "I  know,"  he  says  in  one  place, 
"that  it  is  difficult  to  say  anything  to  you  about  the 
Theban  people  ;  you  hate  them  so  that  you  would  not 
like  to  hear  anything  to  their  credit,  even  if  it  were 
true."  More  and  more  Demosthenes  speaks  as  the 
Hellenic  patriot  rather  than  as  the  Athenian  citizen. 
His  vision  becomes  ever  broader  as  his  feeling  becomes 
ever  more  intense  and  as  the  danger  of  Greece  becomes 
greater.  The  duty  of  Athens  becomes,  as  he  conceives 
it,  to  deliver  the  oppressed  and  to  support  every- 
where the  claims  of  democracy  against  oligarchy  and 
despotism. 

The  old  Athenian  life  and  our  American  life  have 
much  in  common.  The  resemblances  between  Greek 
character  and  ours  are  marked.  Those  little  Greek 
democracies  were  more  like  our  great  one  than  almost 
any  intervening  states.  They  offer  us  more  pertinent 


si 

THE  PRINCIPLES  OF  THE  FOUNDERS  15 

examples  and  warnings  than  almost  any  other  ;  and 
they  are  of  peculiar  value  for  us  in  this,  that  their 
history  is  rounded  and  complete,  and  in  it  we  can  see 
the  various  conflicting  principles  and  tendencies  work- 
ing themselves  out  to  the  end,  and  so  learn  the  full 
lesson  of  their  logic.  Pericles  and  Demosthenes  speak 
to  America  as  well  as  to  Athens  ;  and  we  may  well 
domesticate  their  admonitions  here  to-day  and  empha- 
size them  to  our  people  and  ourselves  as  the  words  of 
fellow  citizens  of  Washington  and  Jefferson,  of  Sum- 
ner  and  Emerson.  If  the  life  and  burning  eloquence 
of  Demosthenes  teach  anything,  if  the  rounded 
period  of  history  whose  darkness  he  lights  up  teaches 
anything,  they  teach  the  validity  and  the  imperious 
moment  of  the  appeal,  in  times  of  danger  and  tempta- 
tion, to  the  fathers  and  to  a  great  past,  to  the  history 
and  the  teachings  which  in  times  of  soberness  have 
ever  had  the  nation's  highest  honor.  No  nation  which 
is  virtuous  and  vital  will  ever  be  slave  to  the  past ;  at 
the  command  of  virtue  and  of  vision  it  will  snap  pre- 
cedent like  a  reed.  But  every  people  of  seriousness, 
stability  and  character  is  a  reverent  people  ;  and  when 
a  people's  reverence  for  its  noble  ancestors,  its  sacred 
oracles  and  its  venerable  charters  ceases  to  be  sturdy 
and  becomes  sentimental,  much  more  when  it  ceases 
to  exist  at  all,  then  the  hour  of  that  people's  decay 
and  doom  has  struck.  On  this  anniversary  of  our 
Declaration  of  Independence,  let  us  remember  and  vow 
never  to  forget  that  when  it  becomes  general  or  pop- 
ular among  us,  as  it  has  become  common,  to  flout  at 
the  Declaration  and  its  principles ;  whenever  the 


16  THE  PRINCIPLES  OF  THE  FOUNDERS 

nation  commits  itself  to  courses  which,  for  the  sake 
of  consistency  and  respectability,  invite  and  compel 
its  disparagement ;  when  our  politics  does  not  match 
our  poetry  and  cannot  be  sung  ;  when  Washington 
and  Jefferson  and  Sumner  and  Lincoln  cease  to  be 
quoted  in  our  cabinet  and  at  our  helm,  —  then  it  is 
not  well  with  us,  but  ill,  and  it  is  time  to  study  the 
compass. 

Our  City  of  Boston  is  in  this  matter  under  the  special 
care  of  the  divinities  ;  they  have  made  regular  provision 
to  remind  us  of  our  pious  founders  and  fathers  every 
day.  The  State  of  Massachusetts  unhappily  has  for  its 
State  seal  one  of  the  most  barbarous  and  least  repre- 
sentative seals  adopted  by  any  State  in  the  Union:  an 
Indian  with  bow  and  arrow,  and  a  clenched  fist  with  a 
sword,  —  formerly  the  emblem  of  Algiers,  —  with  some 
Latin  of  questionable  character  about  keeping  the  peace 
under  the  sword.  It  will  be  remembered  by  some 
here  how  deeply  Charles  Sumner  hated  this  ' ( bellicose 
escutcheon,"  as  he  termed  it,  and  how  in  his  great 
Fourth  of  July  oration  in  1845  he  expressed  the  hope 
that  Massachusetts  might  abandon  it  for  the  sake  of 
something  "more  consistent  with  her  moral  dignity 
and  the  character  she  vaunts  before  the  world."  To 
keep  the  peace  is  certainly  a  commendable  and  neces- 
sary thing ;  but  —  since  some  will  have  it  that  the 
clenched  fist  is  the  policeman's,  not  the  soldier's  —  is 
it  a  thing  to  boast  of  ?  As  soon  be  proud,  in  civiliza- 
tion, that  your  hands  are  clean.  Let  Massachusetts 
not  be  satisfied  to  front  the  world  with  the  badge 
either  of  the  policeman  or  the  warrior  ;  let  her  take 


THE   PRINCIPLES  OF  llff       mEJHJl.         17 

the  mantle  of  the  prophet,  to  which  no  other  modern 
state  has  right  so  valid  and  divine.  Let  us  pledge 
ourselves  here  to  the  effort  to  secure  for  the  Common- 
wealth a  seal  more  worthy  of  her.  And  meantime  let 
us  be  grateful  that  the  motto  upon  the  seal  of  the  City 
of  Boston  is  the  noblest  possible.  For  each  time  that 
an  ordinance  or  proclamation  is  sealed  by  the  govern- 
ment of  Boston, — let  our  City  Hall  never  forget  it, 
and  let  us  not  forget, — it  is  with  the  reverent  tribute 
and  the  prayer:  "God  be  with  us  as  He  was  with  our 
fathers  ! " 

And,  indeed,  if  any  people  ever  had  warrant  and  occa- 
sion to  look  back  to  their  fathers  and  their  history  for 
inspiration  and  imperative,  such  surely  —  Athens  and 
Rome  not  more — have  the  people  of  this  City  of  Boston 
and  this  ancient  Commonwealth.  The  founders  of 
Massachusetts,  our  own  Lowell  has  justly  said,  were 
the  first  colonists  in  human  history  who  went  out  ' '  not 
to  seek  gold,  but  to  seek  God."  "  Next  to  the  fugitives 
whom  Moses  led  out  of  Egypt,"  he  said,  "the  little 
shipload  of  outcasts  who  landed  at  Plymouth  two  cen- 
turies and  a  half  ago  are  destined  to  influence  the  future 
of  the  world."  We  thrill  with  warm  and  proper  pride 
as  we  read  this  high  claim  of  our  Massachusetts  essayist 
and  poet.  With  a  just  pride  we  also  read  the  strong 
words  of  the  president  of  our  Historical  Society,  Charles 
Francis  Adams,  in  his  book  on  our  Massachusetts  his- 
torians,—  a  book  not  written,  as  scholars  here  know 
well,  to  puff  our  Massachusetts  pride,  but  rather  to 
prick  some  of  our  Massachusetts  bubbles:  "The  his- 
tory of  Massachusetts  is  the  record  of  the  gradual  and 


18  THE  PRINCIPLES   OF  THE  FOUNDERS 

practical  development  of  a  social  and  political  truth  of 
the  highest  importance.  Viewed  in  this  light,  the 
passage  of  the  Red  Sea  was  not  a  more  momentous 
event  than  the  voyage  of  the  Mayflower;  and  the 
founding  of  Boston  was  fraught  with  consequences 
hardly  less  important  than  those  which  resulted  from 
the  founding  of  Rome." 

What  is  the  great  political  truth  for  which  Boston 
and  Massachusetts  stand  thus  preeminently  in  history, 
and  which  confers  immortal  lustre  on  them  ?  It  is  the 
truth  for  which  the  Declaration  of  Independence  stands, 
which  we  celebrate  to-day,  the  principle  of  the  equality 
of  men  before  the  law.  This  was  no  deliverance  of  the 
French  Revolution;  it  has  been  well  said  that,  if  there 
was  any  learning  between  Jefferson  and  the  French 
political  philosophers,  they  were  the  learners,  not  he. 
It  was  the  offspring  of  the  Puritan  movement,  which  at 
the  same  time  established  the  English  Commonwealth 
and  planted  New  England.  Mr.  Adams  knows  this 
well;  it  was  to  asking  New  England  to  remember  it  that 
the  eloquent  English  preacher  who  is  now  visiting  us 
devoted  his  first  word  last  week  in  Boston ;  it  was  to 
make  it  plain  and  draw  its  lessons  that  the  keen  and  wise 
Swiss  scholar,  Borgeaud,  in  Calvin's  city,  wrote  his  pen- 
etrating book  upon  ' '  The  Rise  of  Modern  Democracy  in 
Old  and  New  England."  It  was  in  New  England  that 
the  principle  was  really  first  embodied  in  institutions; 
here  Sir  Harry  Vane  was  steeped  in  it;  and  when  pres- 
ently the  Puritans  in  England  drew  up  their  ' '  Agree- 
ment of  the  People  "  and  sought  to  institute  the  prin- 
ciple, they  spoke  of  it  as  "the  New  England  Way." 


THE  PRINCIPLES  OF  THE  FOUNDERS  19 

The  principle  has  had  a  hard  fight  of  it  in  England.  For 
a  century  before  the  Declaration  of  Independence  it  had 
a  hard  fight  of  it  here;  but  Mr.  Adams  is  right  in  say- 
ing that  when  the  Massachusetts  Constitution  of  1780 
went  into  effect,  this  principle  of  human  equality  before 
the  law,  theoretically  enunciated  in  the  Declaration,  was 
a  thing  in  practice  in  New  England.  He  is  right  in 
saying  that  in  respect  to  this  the  record  of  no  commu- 
nity is  more  creditable,  more  consistent,  or  more  impor- 
tant than  ours.  ' « Massachusetts  has  always  been  at  the 
front.  .  .  .  Her  influence  has  been  world- wide.  The 
backbone  of  the  movement  which  preceded  the  French 
Eevolution,  she  inspired  the  agitation  which  ended  in 
the  fall  of  African  slavery." 

It  is  right  to  say,  and  let  us  remember  it  on  this 
sacred  anniversary  as  an  inspiration  to  duty,  that 
Boston  has  been  the  centre  of  the  two  great  move- 
ments in  our  history,  the  movement  which  gave  us 
independence  and  the  movement  which  purged  the 
land  of  slavery.  If  we  could  rear  on  Boston  Common 
a  monument  upon  which,  around  the  central  form  of 
Samuel  Adams,  should  be  grouped  the  figures  of  James 
Otis  and  John  Adams  and  John  Hancock  and  Joseph 
Warren  and  their  great  associates,  how  much  that 
monument  would  represent  of  what  was  most  dynamic 
in  the  days  which  led  up  to  the  American  Eevolution ! 
If  we  could  rear  beside  it  a  monument  upon  which, 
around  the  central  figure  of  William  Lloyd  Garrison, 
should  stand  Wendell  Phillips,  Parker  and  Channing, 
Lowell  and  Emerson,  Sumner  and  Andrew,  how  much 
would  be  represented  by  that  group  of  what  was  most 


20  THE  PRINCIPLES   OF  THE  FOUNDERS 

potent  in  the  anti-slavery  struggle  !  When  the  final 
history  is  written  of  the  great  social  and  industrial  rev- 
olution into  which  we  have  already  far  advanced,  and 
which  will  continue  until  there  exists  throughout  the 
republic  an  industrial  equality  as  great  as  the  political 
equality  which  we  now  enjoy  or  claim  to  enjoy,  it  will 
be  seen  that  here,  too,  Boston  has  done  her  conspicuous 
part.  And  when  we  survey  the  movement  in  behalf 
of  the  overthrow  of  war,  in  behalf  of  the  peace  of 
nations  and  the  organization  of  the  world,  the  preemi- 
nent task  of  our  own  time,  we  shall  find  that  in  this 
great  movement  Boston  has  led  America  ;  I  think  it  is 
not  too  much  to  claim  that  she  has  led  the  world.  As 
it  was  the  glory  of  Boston  and  of  Massachusetts,  proud- 
est of  cities  and  of  commonwealths,  strongest  in  local 
patriotism,  to  lead  the  country  in  the  assertion  of 
national  sovereignty  against  every  false  emphasis  upon 
state's  rights,  in  that  long  struggle  which  nearly  cost 
the  nation  its  life  and  which  made  it  forever  impossi- 
ble for  the  American  to  say  henceforth,  My  state  is 
first,  —  so  it  has  been  their  glory  to  lead  in  the  creation 
of  the  sentiment  which  meets  the  peculiar  problem  and 
menace  of  our  own  age,  enabling  and  inspiring  men  to 
harmonize  their  politics  and  their  religion,  and  know 
that  their  first  allegiance  is  not  to  their  nation,  but  to 
humanity. 

In  this  our  Commonwealth  and  city  have  but  been 
true  to  the  sublime  pointings  and  ideals  of  the  leaders 
of  the  Revolution  and  the  founders  of  the  Republic, 
whom  we  celebrate  to-day.  Independence  for  the  sake 
of  independence,  a  new  nation  for  the  sake  of  a  new 


THE  PRINCIPLES   OF  THE  FOUNDERS  21 

nation, —  that  was  not  the  aim  and  motive  of  our 
fathers.  Their  dream  was  of  a  new  nation  of  juster 
institutions  and  more  equal  laws,  a  nation  in  which 
should  dwell  righteousness,  and  which  should  mark 
the  beginning  of  a  new  era  among  men.  It  should  be 
especially  an  era  of  peace  and  brotherhood  among  the 
nations.  They  hated  war.  They  believed  that  the 
time  had  come  when  the  bloody  dispensation  of  war, 
with  all  its  terrible  wickedness  and  waste,  should 
cease  ;  and  their  ambition  and  high  hope  was  that 
their  new  republic  might  lead  in  the  new  dispensation 
of  peace  and  order  and  mutual  regard.  To  this  abhor- 
rence of  war  as  a  cardinal  and  controlling  sentiment  with 
the  men  who  achieved  our  independence  I  ask  your 
attention ;  and  no  eloquence  can  be  so  powerful  and 
persuasive  as  the  simple  presentation  of  their  words. 

We  call  Samuel  Adams  the  ' '  Father  of  the  American 
Revolution."  He  first  clearly  foresaw  it,  and  he  did 
most  in  the  days  before  1775  to  determine  its  character 
and  direct  its  course.  Of  all  the  statesmen  of  the 
Revolution  he  was  the  one  whose  views  were  closest  to 
those  of  the  great  author  of  the  Declaration  of  Inde- 
pendence. When  in  1801  Jefferson  prepared  his  in- 
augural address  as  president,  he  wrote  to  our  vener- 
able Boston  patriot:  "In  meditating  the  matter  of 
that  address,  I  often  asked  myself,  Is  this  exactly  in 
the  spirit  of  the  patriarch  of  liberty,  Samuel  Adams  ? 
Is  it  as  he  would  express  it  ?  Will  he  approve  of  it  ? 
I  have  felt  a  great  deal  for  our  country  in  the  times 
we  have  seen,  but  individually  for  no  one  so  much  as 
yourself."  Among  the  manuscripts  of  Samuel  Adams 


22  THE  PRINCIPLES  OF  THE  FOUNDERS 

there  exists  one  of  the  most  remarkable  and  prophetic 
documents  of  that  prophetic  time.  Whether  it  ever 
became  a  legislative  act  we  do  not  know  ;  but  it  is  in 
the  form  of  a  letter  of  instructions  from  the  Legisla- 
ture of  Massachusetts  to  the  delegates  in  Congress,  and 
it  apparently  belongs  to  the  period  between  the  close  of 
the  Revolution  and  the  adoption  of  the  Constitution. 
The  General  Court  in  this  letter  declares  the  instruction 
to  be  one  "which  they  have  long  had  in  contemplation, 
and  which,  if  their  most  ardent  wish  could  be  obtained, 
might  in  its  consequences  extensively  promote  the 
happiness  of  man."  The  instruction  is  as  follows  : 

"You  are  hereby  instructed  and  urged  to  move  the 
United  States  in  Congress  assembled  to  take  into  their 
deep  and  most  serious  consideration,  whether  any 
measures  can  by  them  be  used,  through  their  influence 
with  such  of  the  nations  in  Europe  as  they  are  united 
with  by  treaties  of  amity  or  commerce,  that  national 
differences  may  be  settled  and  determined  without  the 
necessity  of  war,  in  which  the  world  has  too  long  been 
deluged,  to  the  destruction  of  human  happiness  and  the 
disgrace  of  human  reason  and  government." 

If  it  was  found  that  no  definite  action  could  then  be 
taken,  it  was  urged  that  it  would  redound  to  the  honor 
of  the  United  States,  that  its  Congress  attended  to  this 
subject,  and  that  it  would  be  accepted  as  a  testimony 
of  gratitude  to  God  for  his  signal  blessings  upon  the 
States  ;  and  the  delegates  were  instructed  to  have  the 
letter  entered  in  the  Journals  of  Congress,  to  remain 
for  the  inspection  of  delegates  from  Massachusetts  in 
future  time. 


THE   PRINCIPLES   OF  THE  FOUNDERS  23 

This  proposition  from  the  Father  of  the  American 
Revolution  —  whose  severe  general  exposures  of  the 
banef  ulness  and  inconsistency  of  militarism  in  democ- 
racy are  so  well  known  —  for  some  regular  and  perma- 
nent arrangement  for  international  arbitration  among 
the  nations  of  Christendom,  to  make  an  end  of  war, 
was  penned  more  than  a  century  before  the  similar 
proposition  of  the  Czar  of  Russia  resulted  in  the  Con- 
ference at  The  Hague  and  the  establishment  of  the  Per- 
manent International  Tribunal,  whose  creation  is  the 
distinctive  historical  event  and  the  crowning  glory  of 
the  present  age. 

Washington,  Franklin,  and  Jefferson, —  these  are  the 
three  names  of  world-wide  fame  in  connection  with 
the  achievement  of  our  independence  and  the  birth  of  the 
nation.  What  was  their  attitude  toward  war  and  the 
military  system  ?  What  was  their  ideal  and  desire  for 
the  United  States  ?  By  fortunate  fatality,  the  history 
of  Jefferson's  administration  has  been  written  by  a  de- 
scendant of  John  Adams,  the  great  defender  of  the 
Declaration  of  Independence  on  the  floor  of  Congress, 
a  brother  of  the  president  of  our  Historical  Society, 
who  defined  in  words  so  noble  the  foundation  and 
vocation  of  Massachusetts  and  of  Boston  ;  and  nowhere 
else  have  the  political  purposes  and  aspirations  of  the 
great  author  of  the  Declaration  been  so  well  stated 
briefly  as  by  Henry  Adams  in  this  history  : 

Jefferson  aspired  beyond  the  ambition  of  a  nationality,  and  em- 
braced in  his  view  the  whole  future  of  man.  That  the  United 
States  should  become  a  nation  like  France,  England  or  Russia,  or 
should  conquer  the  world  like  Rome,  was  no  part  of  his  scheme. 


24  THE  PRINCIPLES  OF  THE  FOUNDERS 

He  wished  to  begin  a  new  era.  Hoping  for  a  time  when  the  world's 
ruling  interests  should  cease  to  be  local  and  should  become  uni- 
versal ;  when  questions  of  boundary  and  nationality  should  become 
insignificant ;  when  armies  and  navies  should  be  reduced  to  the 
work  of  police, —  he  set  himself  to  the  task  of  governing  with  this 
golden  age  in  view.  Few  men  have  dared  to  legislate  as  though 
eternal  peace  were  at  hand,  in  a  world  torn  by  wars  and  convulsions 
and  drowned  in  blood  ;  but  this  was  what  Jefferson  aspired  to  do. 
Even  in  such  dangers,  he  believed  that  Americans  might  safely  set 
an  example  which  the  Christian  world  should  be  led  by  interest  to 
respect  and  at  length  to  imitate.  As  he  conceived  a  true  American 
policy,  war  was  a  blunder,  an  unnecessary  risk  ;  and  even  in  case 
of  robbery  and  aggression,  the  United  States,  he  believed,  had  only 
to  stand  on  the  defensive  in  order  to  obtain  justice  in  the  end.  He 
would  not  consent  to  build  up  a  new  nationality  merely  to  create 
more  navies  and  armies,  to  perpetuate  the  crimes  and  follies  of 
Europe  ;  the  central  government  at  Washington  should  not  be  per- 
mitted to  indulge  in  the  miserable  ambitions  that  had  made  the  Old 
World  a  hell  and  frustrated  the  hopes  of  humanity. 

To  Thomas  Pinckney,  in  1797,  Jefferson  wrote  a 
word  which  suggests  an  utterance  of  John  Bright's 
fourscore  years  afterwards  giving  the  truth  a  broader 
application  to  the  United  States  and  her  opportunity 
as  the  great  peace  power  of  the  world.  Wrote  Jeffer- 
son to  Pinckney  :  "  War  is  not  the  best  engine  for  us 
to  resort  to.  Nature  has  given  us  one  in  our  commerce, 
which,  if  properly  managed,  will  be  a  better  instrument 
for  obliging  the  interested  nations  of  Europe  to  treat 
us  with  justice."  John  Bright,  in  the  House  of  Com- 
mons, in  1879,  speaking  by  interesting  coincidence  on 
the  Fourth  of  July,  set  forth  to  England  and  the 
nations  of  Europe  the  folly  of  their  burdensome  arma- 
ments and  exhausting  taxation,  and  the  terrible  dis- 


THE  PRINCIPLES   OF   THE   FOUNDERS  25 

advantage  under  which  they  labored  in  competition 
with  the  United  States,  unhampered  as  she  was  by 
such  taxation,  by  costly  armies  and  navies,  and  a 
"spirited  foreign  policy."  Her  resources  were  all  free 
for  constructive  purposes.  If  the  United  States  per- 
sisted in  her  political  wisdom  and  commercial  common 
sense  for  a  quarter  of  a  century,  the  nations  of  Europe 
would  be  compelled,  he  believed,  to  throw  over  their 
costly  military  system  in  mere  commercial  self -protec- 
tion. Incredible  to  the  great  English  statesman  and 
lover  of  America  would  have  been  the  intimation  that 
before  the  quarter  of  a  century  rolled  by  we  should 
see  the  growth  among  us  of  a  movement  recklessly 
seeking  to  throw  away  this  very  commercial  advan- 
tage and  our  chief  lever  for  pressing  forward  the 
disarmament  and  peace  of  the  nations  ;  incredible  that 
we,  too,  should  be  wasting  hundreds  of  millions  on 
needless  and  wicked  wars,  we,  too,  shouting  for  a  "  big 
navy"  and  organizing  "naval  leagues,"  descending  to 
meet  the  nations  of  Europe  on  their  own  terms  and 
plane  instead  of  forcing  them  up  to  ours,  tempted  to 
put  on  their  hoary  old  plumes  and  arms  and  false 
prides  and  ambitions  just  when  the  best  minds  among 
themselves  are  striving  so  earnestly  to  make  them  put 
them  off. 

One  year  after  his  letter  to  Thomas  Pinckney,  Jeffer- 
son, in  a  letter  to  Sir  John  Sinclair,  gave  memorable 
expression  to  his  abhorrence  of  the  war  system.  ' '  I 
recoil  with  horror,"  he  said,  "at  the  ferociousness  of 
man.  Will  nations  never  devise  a  more  rational  um- 
pire of  differences  than  force  ?  Are  there  no  means  of 


26  THE  PRINCIPLES   OF  THE  FOUNDERS 

coercing  injustice  more  gratifying  to  our  nature  than  a 
waste  of  the  blood  of  thousands  and  of  the  labor  of 
millions  of  our  fellow  creatures  ?  Wonderful  has  been 
the  progress  of  human  improvement  in  other  lines. 
Let  us  hope,  then,  that  the  law  of  nature,  which  makes 
a  virtuous  conduct  produce  benefit  and  vice  loss  to  the 
agent  in  the  long  run,  which  has  sanctioned  the  com- 
mon principle  that  honesty  is  the  best  policy,  will  in 
time  influence  the  proceedings  of  nations  as  well  as 
individuals,  and  that  we  shall  at  length  be  sensible  that 
war  is  an  instrument  entirely  inefficient  towards  redress- 
ing wrong ;  that  it  multiplies  instead  of  indemnifying 
losses."  And  in  this  striking  passage  he  proceeds  to 
urge  the  economic  argument  against  war:  "Had  the 
money  which  has  been  spent  in  the  present  war  in 
Europe  been  employed  in  making  roads  and  conducting 
canals  of  navigation  and  irrigation  through  the  coun- 
try, not  a  hovel  in  the  Highlands  of  Scotland  or  moun- 
tains of  Auvergne  would  have  been  without  a  boat  at 
its  door,  a  rill  of  water  in  every  field,  and  a  road  to  its 
market  town.  ...  A  war  would  cost  us  more  than 
would  cut  through  the  isthmus  of  Darien;  and  that  of 
Suez  might  have  been  opened  with  what  a  single  year 
has  seen  thrown  away  on  the  rock  of  Gibraltar."  The 
word  comes  with  new  and  added  force  just  as  we  are 
preparing  to  cut  through  that  isthmus  of  Darien  by  the 
taxation  of  the  people,  after  wasting  three  times  its 
cost  in  damaging  and  demoralizing  war. 

Jefferson  became  an  honorary  member  of  the  Massa- 
chusetts Peace  Society  almost  immediately  upon  its 
founding,  and  his  letters  to  Noah  Worcester,  the  founder 


THE  PRINCIPLES  OF  THE  FOUNDERS  27 

of  the  society, —  especially  his  treatment  of  wars  as  the 
duels  of  nations  and  his  prophecy  that  they  would  run 
the  same  course  and  come  to  the  same  end  as  duelling 
among  gentlemen, — are  among  the  most  significant 
papers  in  the  first  volume  of  the  Peace  Society's  journal, 
"The  greatest  of  human  evils," — that  was  Jefferson's 
verdict  upon  war. 

It  was  to  Jefferson  that  the  new  Republican  party 
appealed  and  dedicated  itself  in  its  Philadelphia  plat- 
form of  1856  ;  it  declared  its  purpose  to  restore  the 
action  of  the  Federal  government  to  ' '  the  principles  of 
Washington  and  Jefferson."  Abraham  Lincoln,  the 
year  before  his  election  as  president,  wrote  to  a  great 
Republican  gathering  here  in  Boston  to  celebrate  Jeffer- 
son's birthday : 

The  principles  of  Jefferson  are  the  definitions  and  axioms  of 
free  society.  And  yet  they  are  denied  and  evaded,  with  no  small 
show  of  success.  One  dashingly  calls  them  u  glittering  generalities," 
another  bluntly  calls  them  "  self-evident  lies,"  and  others  insidiously 
argue  that  they  apply  to  "  superior  races."  These  expressions,  differ- 
ing in  form,  are  identical  in  object  and  effect  —  the  supplanting  the 
principles  of  free  government,  and  restoring  those  of  classification, 
caste  and  legitimacy.  They  would  delight  a  convocation  of  crowned 
heads  plotting  against  the  people.  They  are  the  vanguard,  the 
miners  and  sappers  of  returning  despotism.  We  must  repulse  them, 
or  they  will  subjugate  us.  This  is  a  world  of  compensation  ;  and 
he  who  would  be  no  slave  must  consent  to  have  no  slave.  Those 
who  deny  freedom  to  others  deserve  it  not  for  themselves,  and  under 
a  just  God  cannot  long  retain  it.  All  honor  to  Jefferson  —  to  the 
man  who,  in  the  concrete  pressure  of  a  struggle  for  national  inde- 
pendence by  a  single  people,  had  the  coolness,  forecast  and  capacity 
to  introduce  into  a  merely  revolutionary  document  an  abstract  truth 
applicable  to  all  men  and  all  times,  and  so  to  embalm  it  there  that 


28 

to-day  and  in  all  coming  days  it  shall  be  a  rebuke  and  a  stumbling- 
block  to  the  very  harbingers  of  reappearing  tyranny  and  oppression. 

Could  the  words  of  Lincoln  reach  to-day  the  political 
party  which,  ceasing  to  quote  his  words,  ventures  still 
to  name  his  name,  could  they  reach  the  republic  which 
Jefferson  dedicated,  and  which  he  at  Gettysburg  re- 
dedicated  in  Jefferson's  words,  what  other  words  than 
Jefferson's  would  he  choose  to  bring  home  to  us  the 
enormity  of  the  subjugation  by  the  republic  of  a  pro- 
testing, struggling  people,  and  the  enormity  of  all 
unjust  and  unnecessary  war  ? 

To  the  common  sense  of  Franklin  we  should  natur- 
ally expect  that  the  military  system  would  seem  folly  ; 
and  as  matter  of  fact  we  find  that  his  condemnations 
of  the  wickedness  and  waste  of  war  are  even  more 
numerous  and  more  energetic  than  Jefferson's.  Some 
of  them  are  well  known  ;  but  it  will  be  useful  to  bring 
this  strong  body  of  testimony  together.  First,  Frank- 
lin's letter  to  Dr.  Richard  Price,  in  1780.  This  was  in 
the  very  midst  of  the  war,  and  Dr.  Price  was  a  London 
clergyman,  a  subject  of  King  George  ;  but  Franklin 
and  he  remained  warm  friends  throughout,  and  this 
letter  is  one  of  many  which  Franklin  sends  from  Paris  : 

We  make  daily  great  improvements  in  natural,  there  is  one  I 
wish  to  see  in  moral  philosophy  :  the  discovery  of  a  plan  that  would 
induce  and  oblige  nations  to  settle  their  disputes  without  first 
cutting  one  another's  throats.  "When  will  human  reason  be  suffi- 
ciently improved  to  see  the  advantage  of  this  ?  When  will  men  be 
convinced  that  even  successful  wars  at  length  become  misfortunes 
to  those  who  unjustly  commenced  them,  and  who  triumphed  blindly 
in  their  success,  not  seeing  all  its  consequences  ? 


THE  PRINCIPLES   OF  THE  FOUNDERS  29 

In  1782,  in  a  letter  from  Franklin  to  Dr.  Priestley 
upon  man's  common  inhumanity  to  man,  occurs  the 
following  famous  passage  : 

In  what  light  we  are  viewed  by  superior  beings  may  be  gathered 
from  a  piece  of  late  West  India  news,  which  possibly  has  not 
reached  you.  A  young  angel  of  distinction,  being  sent  down  to 
this  world  on  some  important  business,  for  the  first  time,  had  an  old 
courier  spirit  assigned  him  for  his  guide  ;  they  arrived  over  the  seas 
of  Martinico,  in  the  middle  of  the  long  day  of  obstinate  fight  be- 
tween the  fleets  of  Rodney  and  De  Grasse.  When  through  the 
clouds  of  smoke  he  saw  the  fire  of  the  guns,  the  decks  covered  with 
mangled  limbs,  and  bodies  dead  or  dying  ;  the  ships  sinking,  burn- 
ing, or  blown  into  the  air  ;  and  the  quantity  of  pain,  misery  and 
destruction  the  crews  yet  alive  were  thus  with  so  much  eagerness 
dealing  round  to  one  another  ;  he  turned  angrily  to  his  guide  and 
said  :  "  You  blundering  blockhead  !  you  undertook  to  conduct  me 
to  the  earth,  and  you  have  brought  me  into  hell !  "  "  No,  sir,"  says 
the  guide,  "  I  have  made  no  mistake  ;  this  is  really  the  earth,  and 
these  are  men.  Devils  never  treat  one  another  in  this  cruel  manner ; 
they  have  more  sense,  and  more  of  what  men  vainly  call  humanity." 

The  next  year,  1783,  the  treaty  of  peace  was  signed 
which  recognized  the  independence  of  the  United  States ; 
and  Franklin  writes  as  follows  to  Sir  Joseph  Banks : 

I  join  with  you  most  cordially  in  rejoicing  at  the  return  of 
peace.  I  hope  it  will  be  lasting,  and  that  mankind  will  at  length,  as 
they  call  themselves  reasonable  creatures,  have  reason  enough  to 
settle  their  differences  without  cutting  throats  ;  /or,  in  my  opinion, 
there  never  was  a  good  war  or  a  bad  peace.  What  vast  additions  to 
the  conveniences  and  comforts  of  life  might  mankind  have  acquired, 
if  the  money  spent  in  wars  had  been  employed  in  works  of  public 
utility  !  What  an  extension  of  agriculture,  even  to  the  tops  of  the 
mountains  ;  what  rivers  rendered  navigable,  or  joined  by  canals  ; 


30  THE  PKINCIPLES  OF  THE  FOUNDERS 

what  bridges,  aqueducts,  new  roads,  and  other  public  works,  edifices 
and  improvements,  rendering  England  a  complete  paradise,  might 
not  have  been  obtained  by  spending  those  millions  in  doing  good, 
which  in  the  last  war  have  been  spent  in  doing  mischief  —  in  bring- 
ing misery  into  thousands  of  families,  and  destroying  the  lives  of  so 
many  working  people,  who  might  have  performed  the  useful  labors. 

In  the  same  year  he  writes  in  the  same  strain  from 
Paris  to  David  Hartley  in  London : 

I  think  with  you  that  your  Quaker  article  is  a  good  one,  and  that 
men  will  in  time  have  sense  enough  to  adopt  it.  ...  What  would 
you  think  of  a  proposition,  if  I  should  make  it,  of  a  compact  between 
England,  France  and  America?  America  would  be  as  happy  as  the 
Sabine  girls  if  she  could  be  the  means  of  uniting  in  perpetual  peace 
her  father  and  her  husband.  What  repeated  follies  are  these  re- 
peated wars  !  You  do  not  want  to  conquer  and  govern  one  another. 
Why  then  should  you  be  continually  employed  in  injuring  and 
destroying  one  another  ?  How  many  excellent  things  might  have 
been  done  to  promote  the  internal  welfare  of  each  country ;  what 
bridges,  roads,  canals  and  other  public  works  and  institutions,  tend- 
ing to  the  common  felicity,  might  have  been  made  and  established 
with  the  money  and  men  foolishly  spent  during  the  last  seven  cen- 
turies by  our  mad  wars  in  doing  one  another  mischief  !  You  are 
near  neighbors,  and  each  have  very  respectable  qualities.  Learn  to 
be  quiet  and  to  respect  each  other's  rights.  You  are  all  Christians. 
One  is  The  Most  Christian  King,  and  the  other  Defender  of  the 
Faith.  Manifest  the  propriety  of  these  titles  by  your  future  con- 
duct. "  By  this,"  says  Christ,  "  shall  all  men  know  that  ye  are  my 
disciples,  if  ye  love  one  another."  "  Seek  peace  and  ensue  it." 

In  1783,  when  peace  was  uppermost  in  his  thoughts, 
he  wrote  also  to  Mrs.  Mary  Hewson  :  "All  wars  are 
follies,  very  expensive  and  very  mischievous  ones. 
When  will  mankind  be  convinced,  and  agree  to  settle 


THE  PRINCIPLES   OF  THE  FOUNDERS  31 

their  differences  by  arbitration?  Were  they  to  do  it 
even  by  the  cast  of  a  die,  it  would  be  better  than  by 
fighting  and  destroying  each  other."  Four  years  later, 
in  1787,  just  after  the  close  of  the  Constitutional  Con- 
vention, he  returns  to  this  aspect  of  the  subject  in 
the  following  impressive  letter  to  his  sister,  Mrs.  Jane 
Mecom  : 

I  agree  with  you  perfectly  in  your  disapprobation  of  war. 
Abstracted  from  the  inhumanity  of  it,  I  think  it  wrong  in  point  of 
human  providence.  For  whatever  advantages  one  nation  would 
obtain  from  another,  whether  it  be  part  of  their  territory,  the  liberty 
of  commerce  with  them,  free  passage  on  their  rivers,  etc.,  etc.,  it 
would  be  much  cheaper  to  purchase  such  advantages  with  ready 
money  than  to  pay  the  expense  of  acquiring  it  by  war.  An  army  is 
a  devouring  monster,  and  when  you  have  raised  it  you  have,  in 
order  to  subsist  it,  not  only  the  fair  charges  of  pay,  clothing,  pro- 
vision, arms  and  ammunition,  with  numberless  other  contingent 
and  just  charges,  to  answer  and  satisfy,  but  you  have  all  the  ad- 
ditional knavish  charges  of  the  numerous  tribe  of  contractors  to 
defray,  with  those  of  every  other  dealer  who  furnishes  the  articles 
wanting  for  your  army,  and  takes  advantage  of  that  want  to  demand 
exorbitant  prices.  It  seems  to  me  that  if  statesmen  had  a  little 
more  arithmetic,  or  were  more  accustomed  to  calculation,  wars 
would  be  much  less  frequent.  I  am  confident  that  Canada  might 
have  been  purchased  from  France  for  a  tenth  part  of  the  money 
England  spent  in  the  conquest  of  it.  And  if,  instead  of  fighting 
with  us  for  the  power  of  taxing  us,  she  had  kept  us  in  a  good 
humor  by  allowing  us  to  dispose  of  our  own  money,  and  now  and 
then  giving  us  a  little  of  hers  by  way  of  donation  to  colleges  or 
hospitals,  or  for  cutting  canals  or  fortifying  ports,  she  might  easily 
have  drawn  from  us  much  more  by  our  occasional  voluntary  grants 
and  contributions  than  ever  she  could  by  taxea.  Sensible  people 
will  give  a  bucket  or  two  of  water  to  a  dry  pump  that  they  may 
afterwards  get  from  it  all  they  have  occasion  for.  Her  Ministry 


32  THE  PKINCIPLES   OF  THE  FOUNDERS 

were  deficient  in  that  little  point  of  common  sense  ;  and  so  they 
spent  one  hundred  millions  of  her  money,  and  after  all  lost  what 
they  contended  for. 

To  Alexander  Small,  in  England,  he  wrote  in  1787  : 

You  have  one  of  the  finest  countries  in  the  world,  and  if  you 
can  be  cured  of  the  folly  of  making  war  for  trade  (in  which  wars 
more  has  been  always  expended  than  the  profits  of  any  trade  can 
compensate)  you  may  make  it  one  of  the  happiest.  Make  the  most 
of  your  own  natural  advantages,  instead  of  endeavoring  to  diminish 
those  of  other  nations,  and  there  is  no  doubt  but  that  you  may  yet 
prosper  and  flourish.  Your  beginning  to  consider  France  no  longer  as 
a  natural  enemy  is  a  mark  of  progress  in  the  good  sense  of  the  nation. 

Finally,  in  1788,  he  wrote  as  follows  to  M.  LeVeillard 
in  France: 

"When  will  princes  learn  arithmetic  enough  to  calculate,  if  they 
want  pieces  of  one  another's  territory,  how  much  cheaper  it  would 
be  to  buy  them  than  to  make  war  for  them,  even  though  they  were 
to  give  a  hundred  years'  purchase  ?  But  if  glory  cannot  be  valued, 
and  therefore  the  wars  for  it  cannot  be  subject  to  arithmetical  cal- 
culation, so  as  to  show  their  advantage  or  disadvantage,  at  least  wars 
for  trade,  which  have  gain  for  their  object,  may  be  proper  subjects 
for  such  computation;  and  a  trading  nation,  as  well  as  a  single 
trader,  ought  to  calculate  the  probabilities  of  profit  and  loss  before 
engaging  in  any  considerable  adventure.  This,  however,  nations 
seldom  do,  and  we  have  had  frequent  instances  of  their  spending 
more  money  in  wars  for  acquiring  or  securing  branches  of  commerce 
than  a  hundred  years'  profit  or  the  full  enjoyment  of  them  can  com- 
pensate. 

With  these  remarkable  letters,  showing  Franklin,  as 
does  so  much  besides,  so  far  in  advance  of  his  time,  or 
for  that  matter  of  ours,  should  be  read  his  "Observa- 


THE  PRINCIPLES   OF  THE   FOUNDERS  33 

tions  on  War."  Remarking  upon  the  fact  that  Europe 
till  lately  had  been  without  regular  troops,  he  lays  his 
finger  on  the  reason  for  the  portentous  growth  of 
armaments  in  our  own  time  and  the  great  difficulty  of 
disarmament  save  in  concert:  "One  powerful  prince 
keeping  an  army  always  on  foot  makes  it  necessary  for 
his  neighbor  to  do  the  same  to  prevent  surprise."  He 
laments  the  frightful  loss  to  the  world  of  the  labor  of 
all  men  employed  in  war,  and  notes  that  the  soldier 
loses  habits  of  industry  to  such  degree  that  he  is  rarely 
fit  for  sober  business  afterwards. ,  It  is  for  the  interest 
of  humanity  that  the  occasions  of  war  and  the  induce- 
ments to  it  should  be  diminished;  and  he  urges  the 
nations  to  hasten  in  better  mutual  organization.  "  By 
the  original  law  of  nations,  war  and  extirpation  were 
the  punishment  of  injury.  Humanizing  by  degrees,  it 
admitted  slavery  instead  of  death.  A  farther  step  was 
the  exchange  of  prisoners  instead  of  slavery;  another, 
to  respect  more  the  property  of  private  persons  under 
conquest  and  be  content  with  acquired  dominion.  Why 
should  not  this  law  of  nations  go  on  improving  ?  Ages 
have  intervened  between  its  several  steps;  but  as  knowl- 
edge of  late  increases  rapidly,  why  should  not  these 
steps  be  quickened  ?  "  If  it  is  ever  permitted  the  de- 
parted to  come  back  from  the  other  world  to  this,  then 
surely  the  spirit  of  Franklin  must  have  hovered  over 
the  Peace  Conference  at  The  Hague,  where  the  law  of 
nations  took  a  step  so  momentous  and  sublime;  and  it 
must  have  been  present  in  the  great  church  at  Delft 
when,  on  that  Fourth  of  July  in  1899,  by  invitation  of 
the  commissioners  of  the  United  States,  the  members  of 


34  THE  PRINCIPLES  OF  THE  FOUNDERS 

the  Conference  gathered  there  about  the  tomb  of  Gro- 
tius,  and  the  silver  wreath  was  laid  upon  it  in  tribute 
to  the  father  of  international  law,  in  behalf  and  by 
instruction  of  the  government  of  the  great  republic 
which  Franklin  and  Adams  and  Jefferson  and  Wash- 
ington brought  into  being  with  the  prayer  that  it  might 
bring  a  new  era  to  the  world,  an  era  of  peace  on  earth 
and  good  will  among  men. 

Washington  —  the  father  of  his  country  —  what  of 
him  ?  From  him,  too,  we  have  the  strong,  construc- 
tive word.  As  in  other  things,  so  here,  Washington 
unites  the  common  sense  of  Franklin  and  the  vision  of 
Jefferson.  ' '  Cultivate  peace  and  harmony  with  all  na- 
tions "  was  one  of  the  charges  of  his  Farewell  Address  ; 
and  his  cautions  against  those  policies  and  entangle- 
ments which  so  naturally  lead  to  war  are  known,  or 
ought  to  be,  by  every  American.  His  admonition  to 
keep  ourselves  always  in  a  "  respectable  defensive  pos- 
ture," when  strained,  as  it  so  often  is  by  our  militant 
folk,  to  cover  their  schemes,  is  wantonly  misused.  He 
knew,  as  well  as  John  Bright  knew  a  century  later,  how 
happy  is  our  position  and  how  impregnable  we  are  so 
long  as  we  act  like  Christians  ;  and  the  measure  of  his 
idea  of  a  "respectable  defensive  posture  "is  the  fact 
that  the  total  expenditure  for  national  armament  under 
his  sanction  during  the  entire  eight  years  of  his  admin- 
istration was  less  than  eight  million  dollars.  In  the  last 
.half  dozen  years  we  have  spent  in  direful  and  needless 
war  eight  hundred  million  dollars;  and  we  are  multiply- 
ing battle-ships  by  the  dozen  —  surely  not  needed  for 
"respectable  defense" — a  single  one  of  which  costs 


THE  PRINCIPLES   OF  THE  FOUNDERS  35 

almost  as  much  as  our  whole  army  and  navy  appropria- 
tions during  Washington's  long  term  as  president.  In 
the  Farewell  Address  itself  he  denounced  great  arma- 
ments, and  spoke  with  deepest  feeling  of  their  dangers 
to  democracy.  ' '  Overgrown  military  establishments 
are,  under  any  form  of  government,  inauspicious  to  lib- 
erty, and  are  to  be  regarded  as  particularly  hostile  to 
republican  liberty."  Washington  was  no  parochial 
statesman.  No  man  in  his  great  day  saw  so  far  west 
as  he  ;  to-day  his  vision  would  sweep  round  the  world. 
Freeman  wrote  of  him  as  "the  expander  of  England," 
because  he  first  drastically  and  effectually  taught  Eng- 
land that  her  empire  could  expand  and  endure  only  by 
justice.  He  was  much  more  the  great  expander  of  the 
republic  ;  and  he  would  be  the  great  expander  of  the 
republic's  true  influence  among  men.  He  would  tell 
the  republic  to-day  that  it  is  no  longer  boy,  but  man, 
and  that  it  must  acquit  itself  like  a  man.  While  he  was 
yet  with  us  he  foresaw  the  time  "when,  our  institu- 
tions being  firmly  consolidated  and  working  with  com- 
plete success,  we  might  safely  and  perhaps  beneficially 
take  part  in  the  consultations  held  by  foreign  states  for 
the  advantage  of  the  nations  "  ;  and  he  would  tell  us 
that  a  hundred  relations  are  imperative  for  us  to-day 
which  were  not  expedient  for  us  a  hundred  years  ago. 
But  he  would  also  tell  us  that  there  are  truths  which 
do  not  change  with  the  centuries  and  with  which  the 
nation  that  measures  its  power  on  a  continental  scale 
may  no  more  trifle  with  impunity  than  the  new  man- 
child.  There  is  an  indissoluble  union,  he  would  still 
repeat  to  us,  between  ' '  an  honest  and  magnanimous 


36  THE  PRINCIPLES   OF  THE  FOUNDERS 

policy  and  the  solid  rewards  of  public  prosperity  " ;  and 
the  smiles  of  heaven  cannot  be  expected  on  a  nation  when 
it  "disregards  the  eternal  rules  of  order  and  right." 

A  nation  never  does  this  more  flagrantly,  he  held, 
than  in  unjust  and  unnecessary  war  ;  and  the  war 
spirit  is  the  subject  of  his  constant  rebuke.  One  of 
the  points  which  he  puts  down  to  urge,  among  the 
early  hints  for  the  Farewell  Address,  is  ' '  That  we  may 
never  unsheath  the  sword  except  in  self-defence,  so 
long  as  justice  and  our  essential  rights  and  national 
respectability  can  be  preserved  without  it."  To  David 
Humphreys,  secretary  of  the  commission  sent  abroad 
to  negotiate  treaties  of  commerce,  he  wrote,  in  ITS 5, 
concerning  war :  * '  My  first  wish  is  to  see  this 
plague  to  mankind  banished  from  the  earth,  and 
the  sons  and  daughters  of  this  world  employed  in 
more  pleasing  and  innocent  amusements  than  in  pre- 
paring implements  and  exercising  them  for  the  de- 
struction of  mankind."  In  the  same  tone  he  wrote 
in  the  same  year  to  the  Marquis  de  la  Eouerie,  an 
officer  just  appointed  to  the  command  of  a  French 
army  corps:  "My  first  wish  is  (although  it  is 
against  the  profession  of  arms,  and  would  clip  the 
wings  of  some  of  your  young  soldiers  who  are  soaring 
after  glory)  to  see  the  whole  world  in  peace,  and  the 
inhabitants  of  it  as  one  band  of  brothers  striving  who 
should  contribute  most  to  the  happiness  of  mankind." 
To  Rochambeau,  in  1786,  he  expressed  his  abhorrence 
of  the  "rage  of  conquest"  among  the  nations  of 
Europe,  and  of  the  ' '  effusion  of  human  blood  for  the 
acquisition  of  a  little  territory."  To  the  Marquis  de 


THE  PRINCIPLES   OF  THE  FOUNDERS  37 

Chastellux,  in  1788,  he  wrote,  while  the  "  great  person- 
ages" of  the  north  of  Europe  were  "  making  war 
under  the  infatuation  of  Mars  "  :  "  It  is  time  for  the 
age  of  knight-errantry  and  mad  heroism  to  be  at  an 
end.  Your  young  military  men,  who  want  to  reap  the 
harvest  of  laurels,  do  not  care,  I  suppose,  how  many 
seeds  of  war  are  sown ;  but  for  the  sake  of  humanity 
it  is  devoutly  to  be  wished  that  the  manly  employment 
of  agriculture  and  the  humanizing  benefits  of  com- 
merce would  supersede  the  waste  of  war  and  the  rage 
of  conquest ;  that  the  swords  might  be  turned  into 
ploughshares,  the  spears  into  pruning-hooks,  and,  as 
the  Scriptures  express  it,  'the  nations  learn  war  no 
more.' r  In  the  same  year  he  writes  to  Lafayette  : 
"Would  to  God  the  harmony  of  nations  were  an  ob- 
ject that  lay  nearest  to  the  hearts  of  sovereigns,  and 
that  the  incentives  to  peace,  of  which  commerce  and 
facility  of  understanding  each  other  are  not  the  most 
inconsiderable,  might  be  daily  increased  !  "  And  again  : 
"There  seems  to  be  a  great  deal  of  bloody  work  cut 
out  for  this  summer  in  the  north  of  Europe.  If  war, 
want,  and  plague  are  to  desolate  those  huge  armies 
that  are  assembled,  who,  that  has  the  feelings  of  a 
man,  can  refrain  from  shedding  a  tear  over  the  miser- 
able victims  of  regal  ambition?  It  is  really  a  strange 
thing  that  there  should  not  be  room  enough  in  the 
world  for  men  to  live  without  cutting  one  another's 
throats."  At  the  same  time  he  wrote  to  Jefferson  : 
"In  whatever  manner  the  nations  of  Europe  shall 
endeavor  to  keep  up  their  prowess  in  war  and  their 
balance  of  power  in  peace,  it  will  be  obviously  our 


38  THE  PRINCIPLES   OF  THE  FOUNDERS 

policy  to  cultivate  tranquillity  at  home  and  abroad,  and 
to  extend  our  agriculture  and  commerce  as  far  as 
possible."  To  Rochambeau  he  wrote  the  next  year, 
1789  :  "Notwithstanding  it  might  probably,  in  a  com- 
mercial view,  be  greatly  for  the  advantage  of  America 
that  a  war  should  rage  on  the  other  side  of  the  Atlantic, 
yet  I  shall  never  so  far  divest  myself  of  the  feelings 
of  a  man  interested  in  the  happiness  of  his  f  ellowmen 
as  to  wish  my  country's  prosperity  might  be  built  on 
the  ruins  of  that  of  other  nations."  To  the  merchants 
of  Philadelphia  he  said  in  1793  :  "The  friends  of  hu- 
manity will  deprecate  war,  wheresoever  it  may  appear  ; 
and  we  have  experienced  enough  of  its  evils  in  this 
country  to  know  that  it  should  not  be  wantonly  or 
unnecessarily  entered  upon."  In  his  speech  to  Con- 
gress, just  before  this,  in  1792,  he  spoke  the  following 
serious  word,  which  it  becomes  his  countrymen  never 
to  forget:  "It  would  be  wise,  by  timely  provisions, 
to  guard  against  those  acts  of  our  own  citizens  which 
might  tend  to  disturb  peace  with  other  nations,  and  to 
put  ourselves  in  a  condition  to  give  that  satisfaction 
to  foreign  nations  which  we  may  sometimes  have  oc- 
casion to  require  of  them.  I  particularly  recommend 
to  your  consideration  the  means  of  preventing  those 
aggressions  by  our  citizens  on  the  territory  of  other 
nations,  and  other  infractions  of  the  law  of  nations, 
which,  furnishing  just  subject  of  complaint,  might 
endanger  our  peace  with  them." 

Such  were  the  sentiments  of  the  leaders  of  the 
American  Revolution  and  the  founders  of  the  republic 
concerning  war  ;  such  their  solemn  warnings  to  us 


kOS  ANGJEIrj 

THE  PRINCIPLES  OF   THE  FOUISDERS  39 


»> 


against  its  wickedness  and  waste,  against  great  armies 
and  navies,  against  the  indulgence  of  the  military 
spirit  so  hostile  to  democracy,  against  the  rage  of  con- 
quest and  the  lust  for  territorial  aggrandizement, — 
that  "original  sin  of  nations,"  as  Gladstone  so  well 
called  it, —  and  against  injustice  to  any  people;  and 
such  their  lofty  summons  to  the  nation  at  its  birth  to 
make  itself  the  great  peace  power  of  the  world  and 
hasten  the  day  when  the  arbitrament  of  reason  should 
supplant  everywhere  the  arbitrament  of  arms.  And 
this  high  behest  and  vision  of  the  fathers  —  this  is  our 
proud  claim  —  have  nowhere  else  met  with  such  warm 
or  general  acceptance  or  been  honored  and  reinforced 
by  such  earnest  practical  activity  as  here.  The  City  of 
Boston,  the  Commonwealth  of  Massachusetts, — more 
than  any  others  have  these  done  to  make  prevalent  in 
public  opinion  the  gospel  of  peace  preached  by  Wash- 
ington and  Franklin  and  Jefferson,  and  to  embody  their 
noble  and  inspiring  program  in  institutions  and  in  law. 
Here  —  this  is  our  birthright  and  our  boast,  badge  of 
our  honor  and  measure  of  our  obligation  —  has  been 
the  centre  in  America  of  the  movement  for  interna- 
tional justice  and  the  peace  and  order  of  the  world. 

Boston  and  Massachusetts  have  helped  preserve  the 
nation  in  the  way  of  honorable  peace  by  denouncing  in 
the  first  place  the  unjust  and  unnecessary  wars  by 
which  the  nation  has  been  threatened  or  into  which  it 
has  been  betrayed  ;  and  this,  by  the  mouth  of  their 
best  men,  they  have  done  faithfully  and  fearlessly 
through  whatever  clamor  and  passion  on  the  part  of 
the  multitude  or  the  fashionable  mob.  They  had, 


40  THE  PRINCIPLES   OF  THE  FOUNDERS 

indeed,  high  warrant  for  it.  They  never  forgot 
their  own  beginnings  ;  never  forgot  that  the  most 
faithful  and  most  influential  friends,  the  strongest 
reinforcement,  which  the  Boston  town  meetings,  the 
Continental  Congress  and  the  embattled  farmers  had  in 
1775  were  the  manly  and  liberty-loving  Englishmen  in 
Parliament  who,  scorning  the  base  doctrine  that  an 
administration  is  not  to  be  criticized  in  time  of  war, 
defied  ministers  to  their  faces  and  denounced  the  war 
upon  the  colonies  from  first  to  last  as  false  to  every 
cherished  principle  of  English  politics  and  law,  to  the 
common  instincts  of  justice  and  the  fundamental  rights 
of  men.  Let  America  never  forget  this,  never  forget 
the  two  Englands,  the  England  of  Burke  and  Chatham 
as  well  as  the  England  of  Lord  North  and  George  the 
Third,  the  great  England  of  workingmen,  the  men  of 
Lancashire,  as  well  as  the  little  England  that  fitted 
out  the  Alabama,  the  England  of  John  Morley  and 
James  Bryce  as  well  as  of  Joseph  Chamberlain.  Al- 
most every  Englishman  who  is  still  remembered  with 
honor  after  the  century  was  on  our  side  in  1775  ;  as 
almost  every  Englishman  of  world-wide  eminence  in 
thought  denounced  and  resisted  the  ruthlessness  and 
passion  which  blotted  out  last  year  the  little  South 
African  republics.  I  confess  that  I  long  ago  came  to 
question  the  wisdom  of  our  going  on  reading  publicly 
year  after  year  on  the  Fourth  of  July  the  long  list  of 
English  tyrannies  and  usurpations  which  makes  up 
the  greater  part  of  the  Declaration  of  Independence ; 
although  that  stinging  list  has  unhappy  pertinence  for 
us  to-day  as  the  perennial  program  of  oppression.  The 


THE  PRINCIPLES   OF  THE  FOUNDERS  41 

great  general  principles,  the  ,"  blazing  ubiquities,"  we 
will  repeat  forever  ;  let  them  be  written  in  letters  of 
gold  upon  our  capitol  and  graved  upon  our  hearts. 
But  may  we  not  properly  and  profitably  give  poor 
old  George  the  Third  a  rest,  and  concentrate  our 
attention  more  on  contemporary  lunatics  and  sinners  ? 
The  divinities  doubtless  have  their  own  good  reasons 
for  the  long  time  they  take  in  burying  the  remem- 
brance of  such  deeds ;  and  so  long  as  a  distorted  Anglo- 
mania lives  among  us,  or  men  forget  that  this  republic 
is  not  simply  New  England,  but  also  New  Germany, 
New  France,  New  Ireland,  New  Italy,  and  New  Jerusa- 
lem ;  so  long  as  there  is  an  England  which  can  perpe- 
trate and  celebrate  a  Boer  war  ;  so  long,  perhaps,  the 
divinities  will  ordain — "lest  we  forget" — that  America 
shall  go  on  rehearsing  the  story  of  the  Stamp  Act,  the 
Tea  Party,  the  Boston  Massacre,  and  Bunker  Hill,  and 
our  school-boys  shall  recite  the  melancholy  catalogue 
in  the  Declaration,  which  I,  for  one,  have  long  ceased 
to  like  to  hear.  I  prefer  to  remember  that  the  best 
men  in  England  saw  and  said,  in  the  very  midst  of  the 
conflict,  that  the  men  behind  the  redoubt  on  Bunker 
Hill,  and  not  King  George's  soldiers,  were  the  true  rep- 
resentatives of  the  English  idea, —  Samuel  Adams  when 
the  British  government  put  a  price  upon  his  head,  and 
George  Washington  bombarding  the  British  army  out 
of  Boston.  I  prefer  to  remember  that  by  every  text- 
book of  history  in  the  English  schools — I  have  read  the 
pages  in  thirty  of  them — the  English  boy  and  girl  are 
taught  that  we  were  right  and  the  English  government 
fatally  wrong  in  1775,  taught  to  see  heroes  in  Wash- 


42  THE  PRINCIPLES   OF  THE   FOUNDERS 

ington  and  Franklin ;  while  how  often  the  little  Yankee 
is  hardly  out  of  petticoats  before  he  is  setting  up  sticks 
in  the  back-yard  and  shooting  his  peas  at  them  as  "red- 
coats!" I  prefer  to  remember  the  gratitude  declared 
again  and  again  by  the  very  map  of  Massachusetts  to 
our  brave  English  champions. 

Pittsfield  was  so  called  before  1766 ;  but  it  preserves 
the  name  and  memory  of  the  Great  Commoner  who 
in  that  year  thundered  in  Parliament:  "I  rejoice 
that  America  has  resisted.  Three  millions  of  people 
so  dead  to  all  the  feelings  of  liberty  as  voluntarily 
to  submit  to  be  slaves  would  have  been  fit  instru- 
ments to  make  slaves  of  the  rest.  In  a  good  cause 
you  can  crush  America  to  atoms  ;  but  on  this  ground, 
a  crying  injustice,  I  am  one  who  will  lift  up  my 
hands  against  it.  In  such  a  cause  your  success  would 
be  hazardous.  America,  if  she  fell,  would  fall  like 
the  strong  man ;  she  would  embrace  the  pillars  of 
the  State  and  pull  down  the  Constitution  with  her. 
The  Americans  have  been  wronged  ;  they  have  been 
driven  to  madness  by  injustice.  Will  you  punish  them 
for  the  madness  you  have  occasioned  ? "  In  the  same 
spirit,  the  younger  Pitt,  while  the  war  was  in  progress, 
denounced  it  on  the  floor  of  Parliament  as  ' '  the  most 
accursed,  wicked,  barbarous,  cruel,  unnatural,  unjust, 
and  diabolical  war." 

The  name  of  Foxborough  is  a  monument  to  Charles 
James  Fox,  of  whom  Grattan  said  that  when  he  was 
attacking  Lord  North's  administration  during  the 
American  war  he  was  the  best  speaker  he  had  ever 
heard.  The  tea  tax,  Fox  declared,  would  force  the 


THE  PRINCIPLES  OF   THE  FOUNDERS  43 

colonies  into  open  rebellion ;  and  when  the  war  was 
imminent  he  plainly  said  that  "if  the  question  lay 
between  conquering  and  abandoning  America  he  was 
for  abandoning  it."  To  Boston  he  paid  special  tribute 
for  her  heroic  suffering  in  the  common  cause.  In 
Fox's  speech  after  Saratoga,  Luttrell  charged  him  with 
talking  treason, — as  Horace  Walpole  might  easily  have 
been  charged,  who  exclaimed  when  the  news  came 
from  Saratoga,  "Thank  God,  old  England  is  safe, — 
that  is,  America,  whither  the  true  English  retired 
under  Charles  the  First ! "  The  war  with  America 
Fox  pronounced  "a  war  of  passion"  ;  and  after  York- 
town,  when  the  government  announced  that  ' '  Parlia- 
ment had  heard  with  impatience  the  narratives  of  the 
disasters,"  he  burst  forth  hotly  :  "Ministers  must,  by 
the  aroused  indignation  and  vengeance  of  an  injured 
and  undone  people,  hear  of  them  at  the  tribunal  of 
justice  and  expiate  them  on  the  public  scaffold." 

Our  town  of  Conway  perpetuates  the  name  of  the 
chivalric  mover  of  the  repeal  of  the  Stamp  Act,  of 
whom  in  the  hour  of  his  triumph  Burke  wrote:  "I 
stood  near  him,  and  his  face,  to  use  the  expression  of 
the  Scriptures  of  the  first  martyr,  his  face  was  as  it 
were  the  face  of  an  angel."  From  that  hour  to  1780, 
when  he  so  burningly  reproached  the  bishops,  then  as 
in  1900  almost  solid  in  support  of  reaction  and  oppres- 
sion, for  backing  up  the  war  and  bloodshed,  Conway 
was  always  true  to  justice  and  to  America. 

Our  Grafton  was  named  after  that  Duke  of  Grafton, 
who  in  1775  spoke  plainly  to  the  king  of  his  ministers 
as  men  who,  ' '  deluded  themselves,  are  deluding  your 


44  THE  PRINCIPLES  OF  THE  FOUNDERS 

majesty."  When  later  on  the  king  spoke  to  him  of 
the  Hessians  he  was  sending  over,  he  said  to  him  more 
plainly  still:  "Your  majesty  will  find  too  late  that 
twice  the  number  will  only  increase  the  disgrace  and 
never  effect  the  purpose." 

Our  Massachusetts  Barre,  too, —  it  bears  the  name  of 
Colonel  Isaac  Barre,  whose  famous  phrase  was  caught 
up  by  our  "Sons  of  Liberty"  everywhere  in  the 
Stamp  Act  days  for  their  christening.  It  was  Barre" 
who  retorted,  when  Lord  North  proposed  to  retain  the 
tea  tax  for  the  mere  sake  of  humbling  America,  that 
America  thus  "humbled"  would  serve  only  as  "a 
monument  of  your  arrogance  and  your  folly.  For 
my  part,"  he  said,  "the  America  I  wish  to  see  is  an 
America  increasing  and  prosperous,  raising  her  head 
in  graceful  dignity,  with  freedom  and  firmness  assert- 
ing her  rights,  vindicating  her  liberties,  pleading  her 
services  and  conscious  of  her  merit.  If  we  do  not 
change  our  conduct  towards  her,  America  will  be 
torn  from  our  side."  Barrels  bust  and  his  portrait 
find  their  place  in  the  public  buildings  of  our  Massachu- 
setts town.  At  one  of  the  town  celebrations  thirty 
years  ago,  the  poet  recounts  how,  at  the  outbreak  of 
the  Revolution : 

"When  Hutchinson,  that  hated  name, 
Was  flung  aside  in  scorn  and  shame, 
'Twas  Barrels  fame  the  town  most  prized, 
And  Barre  'twas  anew  baptized. 

And  in  the  following  lines  he  repeats  almost  literally 
the  manly  and  indignant  passage  in  Barre's  speech 


Lj 


THE  PRINCIPLES   OF  THE  FOUNDERS  45 

in  Parliament  which  particularly  endeared  him  to  our 
fathers  : 

"  They,  exiles  !  planted  by  your  care  ? 
'Twas  your  oppression  drove  them  there. 
Nourished  by  your  indulgence?    No  ! 
'Twas  your  neglect  that  made  them  grow. 
Protected  by  your  arms?    They  fought 
In  your  defence  ;  unaided  wrought 
In  those  far  wilds  to  build  a  state 
To  make  your  Empire  wide  and  great. 
But  mark  I  the  love  of  freedom  still, 
As  ever,  rules  that  people's  will ; 
Forbear  to  try  their  temper,  lest 
They  from  your  grasp  that  Empire  wrest." 
Our  fathers  heard  across  the  sea 
Those  words  of  fire,  that  burning  plea  : 
They  felt  the  flame,  then  dealt  the  stroke 
That  brake  in  pieces  England's  yoke. 
Thereafter,  Isaac  Barry's  name 
New  England's  household  word  became. 

The  name  which  thus  became  one  of  our  household 
words  is  repeated  in  Vermont,  in  New  York,  Pennsyl- 
vania, and  I  know  not  where  besides,  —  in  Pennsylvania 
united  with  the  name  of  another  of  our  gallant  English 
friends  in  that  stormy  time,  making  Wilkesbarre.  In- 
deed our  own  Barre  balanced  between  Barre  and  Wilkes. 
How  many  Burkes  and  Pittsburgs  and  Chathams  and 
Foxboroughs  and  Camdens  and  Conways  and  Graftons 
scattered  between  the  Atlantic  and  the  Pacific  repeat 
America's  gratitude  to  that  great  group  of  Englishmen! 
There  ought  to  be  a  town  of  Burke  in  every  state  in  the 
Union,  to  emphasize  by  its  very  name  to  our  people  and 


46  THE  PRINCIPLES   OF  THE  FOUNDERS 

our  politicians  to  all  time  that  great  statesman's  sturdy 
common  sense  and  noble  philosophy  of  liberty  and  law, 
of  conciliation  and  magnanimity.  The  American  colo- 
nists, Burke  declared  in  Parliament,  "were  not  only 
devoted  to  liberty,  but  to  liberty  according  to  English 
ideas  and  on  English  principles."  "It  is  not  what  a 
lawyer  tells  me  I  may  do, "  he  said  to  the  hair-splitting 
and  time-serving  politicians,  "but  what  humanity,  rea- 
son and  justice  tell  me  I  ought  to  do. " 

It  is  natural  that  America  should  honor  these  men; 
but  they  are  the  statesmen  of  that  period  whom  to-day 
all  England  honors  too.  It  is  common  enough  for  min- 
isters to  condemn  wars  long  after  the  event.  Cobden 
and  Bright  were  almost  mobbed  for  opposing  the  Cri- 
mean war  during  its  progress;  but  yesterday,  with  all 
the  terrible  slaughter  and  tragedy  fifty  years  behind, 
a  Tory  premier  —  following  the  fashion  so  common  fifty 
years  after  ruthless  wars  —  talks  jocularly  after  dinner 
about  England  in  the  Crimea  having  ' '  put  her  money 
on  the  wrong  horse. "  Chatham  and  Burke  did  not  wait 
fifty  years .  They  denounced  a  sinning  government  when 
denunciation  demanded  courage  and  had  point  —  when 
the  government  was  in  its  sins;  and  they  are  the  monu- 
mental rebuke  for  all  time  of  the  flabby  plea,  still  some- 
times heard  even  in  the  America  which  celebrates  them, 
that  the  patriot  in  time  of  war  must  postpone  virtue 
and,  if  evil  be  officially  decreed,  follow  the  multitude  to 
do  it.  As  our  republic,  year  by  year,  commemorates 
the  heroic  struggle  for  her  independence,  let  her  always 
remember  and  rejoice  that  it  was  in  connection  with 
that  struggle,  didactic  in  so  much,  that  this  great 


THE  PRINCIPLES  OF  THE  FOUNDERS  47 

lesson,  so  fundamental  for  democracy,  was  most  mem- 
orably taught,  with  venerable  and  eternal  power. 

How  well  Boston  and  Massachusetts  learned  the 
lesson  they  showed  in  the  shameful  period  of  the  an- 
nexation of  Texas  and  the  Mexican  War,  one  of  the 
most  iniquitous  wars  in  the  history  of  the  republic, 
or  of  the  world.  General  Grant,  who  served  in  the 
war,  justly  declared  it  "one  of  the  most  unjust  ever 
waged  by  a  stronger  against  a  weaker  people."  He 
said  plainly  and  truly  that  it  was  ' '  a  political  war  " 
and  that  our  troops  "were  sent  to  provoke  a  fight." 
Zachary  Taylor  himself,  who,  unquestioningly,  obedient 
soldier  that  he  was,  fought  its  battles  and  became  its 
hero,  viewed  it  just  as  Grant  viewed  it,  and  Henry 
Clay  ;  and  it  was  largely  because  men  knew  it  that  he 
was  made  President  of  the  United  States.  "My  life," 
he  wrote  at  the  close  of  the  war,  ' '  has  been  devoted 
to  arms,  yet  I  look  upon  war  at  all  times  and  under 
all  circumstances  as  a  national  calamity,  to  be  avoided 
if  compatible  with  the  national  honor.  The  principles 
of  our  government,  as  well  as  its  true  policy,  are  op- 
posed to  the  subjugation  of  other  nations  and  the  dis- 
memberment of  other  countries  by  conquest."  We 
have  lived  to  hear  the  politics  of  James  K.  Polk  apolo- 
gized for  in  Boston,  on  the  ground  that  Texas  and  Cali- 
fornia to-day  are  prosperous  states — with  the  other  herit- 
ages of  that  politics  cavalierly  brushed  aside.  But  Bos- 
ton and  Massachusetts  knew  in  1845  as  well  as  in  1865 
what  the  fields  are  in  which  a  nation  pays  the  penalties 
of  its  sins  ;  and  here  was  the  centre  of  the  opposition. 
We  do  not  forget  the  noble  utterances  of  Giddings, 


48  THE  PRINCIPLES  OF  THE  FOUNDERS 

of  Clay,  and  even  of  Calhoun  ;  but  three-quarters  of 
the  words  which  ring  down  through  history  in  con- 
demnation of  the  Mexican  War  and  the  policy  which 
provoked  it  are  Massachusetts  words.  It  is  in  the 
writings  of  Channing  and  the  speeches  of  John  Quincy 
Adams  that  the  process  of  the  annexation  of  Texas 
finds  its  righteous  exposure  ;  and  as  the  iniquitous  war 
went  on,  all  that  was  virtuous  and  chivalric  in  this 
city  and  this  Commonwealth  was  combined  to  mourn 
the  dishonor  and  impeach  the  crime.  When  we  have 
named  Daniel  Webster  and  Charles  Francis  Adams, 
Charles  Sumner  and  Henry  Wilson,  Dana  and  Hillard, 
Palfrey  and  Horace  Mann,  Samuel  and  Kockwood 
Hoar,  Garrison,  Phillips  and  Theodore  Parker,  Long- 
fellow and  Lowell,  Whittier  and  Emerson  —  who  will 
care  to  confront  that  roll  of  honor  with  the  census  of 
the  Massachusetts  morality  and  intelligence  which  in 
that  time  contended  that  criticism  must  cease  in  war 
and  that  the  patriot's  doctrine  then  must  be  "My 
country,  right  or  wrong  "  ? 

It  stirs  the  blood  to  read  the  record  of  the  meetings 
here  in  Faneuil  Hall  in  1845.  We  should  all,  I  think, 
have  liked  to  be  here  at  the  January  meeting,  when  the 
Texas  issue  was  at  its  hottest,  and  have  heard  the  ad- 
dress which  Daniel  Webster  helped  prepare  :  ' '  Massa- 
chusetts denounces  the  iniquitous  project  in  its  incep- 
tion and  in  every  stage  of  its  progress,  in  its  means  and 
in  its  end,  and  in  all  the  purposes  and  pretenses  of  its 
authors."  We  should  like  to  have  been  at  the  November 
meeting,  for  which  Charles  Sumner  wrote  the  resolu- 
tions, which,  as  he  wrote  at  a  later  day,  ' '  start  with  the 


THE  PRINCIPLES   OF  THE  FOUNDERS  49 

enunciation  of  equal  rights  and  the  brotherhood  of  all 
men  as  set  forth  in  the  Declaration  of  Independence," 
which  he  always,  from  beginning  to  end,  made  the 
foundation  of  his  arguments,  appeals  and  aspirations. 
Sumner's  speech  at  that  Faneuil  Hall  meeting  was  his 
first  public  utterance  after  his  Fourth  of  July  oration 
on  "The  True  Grandeur  of  Nations";  and  he  here 
firmly  applied  the  general  principles  of  that  oration  to 
the  concrete  case  before  the  country.  That  was  the 
characteristic  of  the  men  of  Massachusetts  in  that 
heroic  generation.  They  spoke  tart  truth  and  called 
things  by  their  right  names.  If  the  administration 
was  aiding  and  abetting  a  crime  against  Kansas,  "  The 
Crime  Against  Kansas"  was  what  Sumner  made  a 
speech  about.  If  the  criminals,  in  the  midst  of  their 
shameful  politics,  prated  about  "democracy"  and 
"manifest  destiny,"  Emerson  told  them  with  his  holy 
scorn  that  these  were  "fine  names  for  an  ugly  thing." 
"They  call  it  otto  of  rose  and  lavender,  —  I  call  it 
bilge  water."  It  was  this  which  made  the  "Biglow 
Papers"  not  only  the  masterpiece  of  American  wit 
and  humor  but  one  of  the  immortal  masterpieces  of 
political  morality.  Nowhere  was  the  man  of  pious 
generalities  who  always  fails  in  the  actual  exigency 
more  sharply  satirized  than  by  Lowell  then  and  there. 

I'm  willin'  a  man  should  go  tollable  strong 

Agin  wrong  in  the  abstract,  fer  thet  kind  o'  wrong 

Is  oilers  unpop'lar  an'  never  gits  pitied, 

Because  it's  a  crime  no  one  never  committed  ; 

But  he  mus'n't  be  hard  on  partickler  sins, 

Coz  then  he'll  be  kickin'  the  people's  own  shins. 


50  THE  PRINCIPLES  OF  THE  FOUNDERS 

In  1847,  in  the  very  midst  of  the  Mexican  War,  a 
committee  of  the  Massachusetts  Legislature  invited 
Charles  Sumner  to  prepare  for  it  a  report  on  the  war. 
This  Sumner  did,  the  report  embodying  a  searching 
history  of  the  war  and  its  unrighteous  provocation,  and 
solemnly  condemning  it  with  all  the  energy  of  the  reso- 
lutions passed  in  Faneuil  Hall.  This  old  report  by 
Sumner,  long  forgotten,  was  last  year  rescued  from  the 
oblivion  of  the  document  room  and  reprinted  here  in 
Boston  ;  and  I  think  that  no  verdict  ever  penned  upon 
the  Mexican  War,  or  upon  any  government  which,  in 
the  words  of  General  Grant,  sends  soldiers  to  "  provoke 
a  fight"  for  political  purposes,  will  better  stand  the 
test  of  the  day  of  judgment.  The  report  passed  both 
houses  of  the  Legislature  by  vote  of  more  than  two  to 
one,  as  the  declared  opinion  of  the  State  upon  that  war. 
This  was  the  answer  of  the  Legislature  and  the  people 
of  Massachusetts  in  1847,  in  the  very  midst  of  war,  to 
the  men  who  say  that  when  a  war  is  once  declared  the 
patriot  shall  suspend  the  exercise  of  judgment,  and  all 
do  wrong  harmoniously  together.  These  Massachusetts 
protesters  were  in  a  minority  in  the  country  ;  the  mob 
had  the  war  fever,  and  poured  reproach  and  ridicule 
upon  the  State.  But  the  insight  and  conscience  of 
Massachusetts  were  not  concerned  with  majorities  and 
mobs  ;  they  were  concerned  with  truth  and  right  — 
and  the  years  have  been  their  justifiers. 

I  think  that  history  will  award  to  our  Common- 
wealth and  city  the  same  conspicuous  praise  for  their 
position  during  the  period  through  which  we  are  pass- 
ing. ' '  Traitors  "  have  been  as  thick  in  Boston  in  the 


THE  PRINCIPLES  OF  THE  FOUNDERS  51 

last  half-dozen  years  as  in  the  British  Parliament  in 
1775,  or  in  the  Massachusetts  Legislature  in  1847. 
However  men  may  vary  as  to  the  wisdom  of  our  stay- 
ing in  the  Philippines,  the  policy  which  our  govern- 
ment elected  there  was  certainly  a  mournful  one,  as 
false  to  every  wise  and  worthy  principle  as  our  course 
in  Mexico,  so  justly  characterized  by  General  Grant, 
and  as  England's  course  in  1775,  so  sternly  judged  by 
Burke  and  Chatham.  The  plainest  dictate  of  political 
morality,  as  of  common  providence,  if  we  were  sincere 
in  our  profession  of  desire  to  make  these  people,  children 
in  politics,  self-governing  and  national,  was  to  foster  and 
help,  and  not  destroy,  the  prestige  and  power  of  that 
contingent  of  them  that  had  attained  the  national 
spirit  and  ambition  and  was  able  to  inspire  them, 
able  to  organize  revolution,  raise  armies,  frame  gov- 
ernment, and  command  the  popular  confidence  and 
affection. 

We  are  now  told  that  a  score  of  the  Senators  who 
voted  for  the  Philippine  treaty  have,  within  a  year, 
expressed  their  sorrow  for  it ;  but  there  is  no  virtue  in 
sorrow  unless  it  be  sorrow  for  wrong  and  not  simply 
for  losses  and  poor  prospects.  Franklin  wrote  to  Liv- 
ingston in  1782:  "  Every  one  of  the  present  British 
ministry  has,  while  in  the  ministry,  declared  the 
war  against  us  unjust."  Demosthenes  prayed  to  the 
gods  for  sure  salvation  and  that  men  might  have 
better  hearts ;  and  there  is  no  sure  salvation  but  in 
better  hearts.  He  censured  Athens  for  reflecting  after 
the  event ;  but  salutary  and  saving  reflection  before 
the  event  was  possible  with  us  only  to  men  thoroughly 


52  THE  PRINCIPLES  OF  THE  FOUNDERS 

imbued  with  the  principles  of  Charles  Sumner  and 
Samuel  Adams  and  Edmund  Burke.  Those  principles 
would  have  made  impossible  in  the  Philippines  a  policy 
of  conquest  and  subjugation  instead  of  a  policy  of  fra- 
ternity, conciliation  and  magnanimity.  My  claim  for 
Boston  and  for  Massachusetts  is  that  this  was  seen 
most  clearly,  felt  most  deeply  and  declared  most 
strongly  here,  and  that  history  will  pronounce  our 
city,  in  1900  as  in  1845,  the  capital  of  the  opposition  to 
"  one  of  the  most  unjust  wars  ever  waged  by  a  stronger 
against  a  weaker  people."  We  would  make  no  boast- 
ful nor  pretentious  catalogue,  nor  forget  that  men 
more  conspicuous  than  any  in  our  borders  spoke  the 
severe  and  lofty  American  word.  Benjamin  Harrison 
and  Grover  Cleveland,  both  of  our  former  presidents, 
spoke  it.  Sherman  and  Edmunds  and  Thomas  Reed, 
all  in  their  time  the  favored  candidates  of  Massachu- 
setts for  the  presidential  place,  spoke  it.  Andrew  Car- 
negie and  a  score  of  the  great  captains  of  finance  and 
industry,  with  Franklin's  common  sense  and  Franklin's 
honor,  spoke  it.  Of  all  Carnegie's  splendid  generosi- 
ties, no  gift,  not  even  that  most  splendid  one  of  the 
Peace  Temple  at  The  Hague,  ennobles  him  so  highly 
as  his  offer  to  make  good  to  our  government,  if  it 
would  release  its  hold  upon  the  struggling  people  of 
the  Philippines,  the  twenty  million  dollars  it  had  paid 
to  Spain  to  release  hers.  Had  Carnegie's  prayer  to 
sign  that  check  been  granted,  the  signature  would  have 
been  one  worthy  to  stand  beside  that  of  the  great  Bos- 
ton merchant,  John  Hancock,  which  headed  the  signa- 
tures to  the  Declaration  of  Independence. 


THE  PRINCIPLES  OP  THE  FOUNDERS  53 

The  organized  workingmen  of  America,  from  east  to 
west,  spoke  with  one  voice  for  generosity  and  justice. 
We  do  not  forget  in  Boston  the  great  mass  meetings  in 
Chicago,  greater  than  any  here,  nor  the  Christian  chiv- 
alry in  Philadelphia  ;  we  do  not  forget  the  great  com- 
panies of  jurists  and  divines  in  every  state  who,  often 
through  much  obloquy,  kept  the  faith.  Howells  and 
Mark  Twain  and  John  Burroughs  in  New  York  and  the 
poets  and  men  of  letters  the  country  through  spoke  out 
the  old  truths  as  loyally  as  Higginson  and  literary  Bos- 
ton, 'f  Cursed  is  the  war  no  poet  sings,"  is  the  fine 
authoritative  line  of  one  of  our  Boston  poets ;  and  how- 
ever much  subsiding  passion  still  divides  us,  we  shall  all 
soon,  I  think,  rejoice  together  that,  although  the  Revo- 
lution and  the  Civil  War  hold  so  great  and  sacred  place 
in  our  literature,  there  is  no  single  reputable  song  there 
which  celebrates  the  conquest  of  Mexico  or  the  conquest 
of  Luzon.  How  many  a  gallant  soldier  in  the  field  has 
hated  the  war  of  conquest  and  subjugation  and  felt  it 
to  be  opposed  to  the  principles  of  the  republic  as  deeply 
as  Grant  and  Zachary  Taylor  felt  it  in  Mexico,  and  as 
deeply  as  the  General-in-Chief  of  our  army  to-day,  who 
has  been  kept  so  carefully  in  quiet  during  the  last  five 
years !  It  is  precisely  because  General  Miles  has  felt  as 
Grant  felt  in  Mexico,  and  because  the  country  has 
known  it,  that  the  popular  impulse  to  do  him  highest 
honors  has  been  so  persistent  and  irresistible.  He,  too, 
the  great  soldier,  son  of  Massachusetts,  has  kept  the 
faith  ;  and  when,  the  next  year  or  the  next,  he  comes 
back  to  make  our  Puritan  city  his  permanent  home,  we 
shall  honor  him  chiefly  for  the  spirit  which  made  him 


54  THE  PRINCIPLES  OF  THE  FOUNDERS 

utter  as  his  last  words  at  the  great  military  banquet 
here  last  week,  "So  long  as  you  remain  true  to  the 
principles  of  our  fathers  and  of  the  Declaration  of  In- 
dependence and  to  the  Constitution,  so  long  will  the 
army  and  navy  maintain  the  honor  and  character  of 
your  country." 

The  principles  of  our  fathers  and  of  the  Declaration 
of  Independence  have,  I  say,  with  due  honor  to  all 
others,  been  most  strenuously  insisted  on  in  this  sad 
time  here  in  Boston  and  in  Massachusetts.  The 
Demosthenes  of  the  hour  in  the  Senate  at  Wash- 
ington has  been  George  F.  Hoar.  In  the  House  of 
Representatives  there  has  been  no  influence  more 
potent  than  that  of  Samuel  W.  McCall.  The  fore- 
most of  the  protesting  scholars  and  teachers  of  the 
country  has  been  President  Eliot  of  Harvard  Univer- 
sity. And  the  leader  of  the  popular  agitation,  not  in 
Massachusetts  only,  but  in  the  country,  has  been  the 
venerable  George  S.  Bout  well,  who,  having  served  his 
state  and  nation  in  every  high  capacity,  never  rendered 
them  service  so  high  and  sacred  as  in  these  last  years, 
when  he  has  put  younger  men  to  shame  by  his  zealous 
and  untiring  labors  to  keep  the  sons  true  to  the  great 
principles  of  the  fathers.  I  think  it  will  not  be  denied 
that  the  country  at  large  has  recognized  Boston  as  the 
centre  of  the  opposition  to  this  unhappy  war.  It  has 
been  made  by  some  a  reproach  to  her,  as  by  others  an 
honor.  What  we  ask  here  is  recognition  of  the  fact. 

But  when  all  this  has  been  said,  and  when  it  has 
been  granted,  I  make  a  larger  claim  for  Boston  than 
that  of  opposition  to  unworthy  wars,  in  the  service 


THE  PRINCIPLES  OF  THE  FOUNDERS  55 

of  the  great  program  for  the  peace  and  organization  of 
the  world,  which  inspired  Jefferson  and  Franklin  and 
Washington.  Hers  has  not  been  simply  the  service 
of  criticism,  noble  and  imperative  as  she  has  felt  the 
critical  function  to  be  always  in  the  republic,  but 
much  more  the  service  of  construction  and  of  educa- 
tion. Hers  is  the  glory  of  having  founded  the  first 
influential  Peace  Society  in  the  world,*  and  of  having 
made  herself,  from  the  hour  of  its  founding  to  the 
present,  the  most  influential  seat  of  education  in  this 
cause,  which  men  are  coming  to  see  to-day  to  be 
the  world's  most  commanding  cause.  A  month  ago 
we  dedicated  on  our  Public  Garden,  on  the  centennial 
of  the  beginning  of  his  great  ministry  in  Boston,  a 
statue  of  William  Ellery  Channing.  It  was  in  Chan- 
ning's  study,  on  the  day  after  Christmas,  in  1815,  that 
the  Massachusetts  Peace  Society  was  born  ;  and  among 
the  many  things  for  which  America  and  the  world 
hold  Channing  in  high  honor,  he  has  no  greater  glory 
than  that  earned  by  his  lifelong  service  in  the  cause 
of  peace.  We  remember  here  to-day  that  the  one 
Fourth  of  July  oration  in  Boston  which  is  historic  and 
ever  memorable  was  that  by  Charles  Sumner,  in  1845, 
on  ' '  The  True  Grandeur  of  Nations  "  ;  and  among  the 
many  things  for  which  the  world  honors  Charles 
Sumner,  it  honors  him  for  nothing  more  than  that  he 
was  true  throughout  his  public  life  to  the  ' '  declaration 
of  war  against  war,"  with  which  he  began  it,  putting 

*The  New  York  Peace  Society,  the  first  in  the  world,  was  organized  in  August, 
1815,  and  the  Ohio  Peace  Society,  December  2,  1815  ;  but  the  Massachusetts  Society, 
organized  December  26, 1815,  at  once  took  the  lead.  The  English  Society,  the  first  in 
Europe,  was  formed  in  .London,  June  14, 1816.  . 


56  THE  PRINCIPLES  OF  THE  FOUNDERS 

into  his  speeches  in  the  Senate  the  gospel  which  Chan- 
ning  preached  in  the  pulpit,  the  gospel  of  the  Declara- 
tion of  Independence  and  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount. 
It  was  in  the  Old  South  Meeting  House,  on  Christmas 
Day,  1820,  when  he  was  nine  years  old,  stirred  by  the 
eloquence  of  Josiah  Quincy,  the  great  mayor,  address- 
ing the  Peace  Society,  that  the  boy  Charles  Sumner 
received  those  deep  and  lasting  impressions  which, 
confirmed  as  he  closed  his  college  life  by  the  solemn 
words  of  William  Ladd,  in  the  old  court-house  at 
Cambridge,  moved  him  to  consecrate  himself  to  the 
gospel  of  peace ;  and  the  life  of  the  man,  down  to  the 
last  hour,  when  he  bequeathed  a  fund  to  Harvard  Col- 
lege for  an  annual  prize  for  the  best  essay  on  the  meth- 
ods by  which  war  may  be  permanently  superseded, 
showed  how  well  that  vow  was  kept.  We  rejoice  that 
the  spires  of  the  Old  South  Meeting  House  and  Park 
Street  Church  still  stand,  pointing  to  heaven,  in  our  busy 
streets.  Among  the  many  things  which  command  our 
reverence  for  those  sacred  structures,  few  are  more 
appealing  than  the  fact  that  within  their  walls  at  Christ- 
mas time  for  many  years,  first  for  a  long  period  in  the 
one,  and  then  for  a  long  period  in  the  other,  were  held 
the  annual  meetings  of  the  Peace  Society.  It  was  at 
the  first  meeting  held  in  Park  Street  Church,  in  1849, 
four  years  after  his  Fourth  of  July  oration  on  "  The  True 
Grandeur  of  Nations, "  that  Sumner  gave  his  still  greater 
oration  on  "The  War  System  of  Nations,"  the  most 
powerful  impeachment  of  war  and  the  war  spirit,  I 
confidently  declare,  ever  framed  in  a  single  address  by 
the  hand  of  man.  Channing  has  paid  the  fitting  tribute 


THE  PRINCIPLES   OF   THE   FOUNDERS  57 

to  JSToah  Worcester,  the  great-minded  founder  of  the 
Massachusetts  Peace  Society,  and  I  do  not  need  to  do  it ; 
but  we  may  never  forget  that  his  ' '  Solemn  Eeview  of 
the  Custom  of  War,"  published  in  Boston,  in  1814,  was 
long  the  chief  document  of  the  Peace  cause,  and  that 
his  able  and  noble  organ,  "The  Friend  of  Peace,"  was 
the  pioneer  Peace  journal  in  the  world.  Sumner  has 
told  what  he  owed  and  what  the  world  owed  to  William 
Ladd,  the  founder  of  the  American  Peace  Society,  in 
which  our  early  one  was  merged,  and  which  has  its 
headquarters  here,  and  I  do  not  need  to  do  it ;  but  let 
Boston  and  America  forget  not  that  heroic  life.  I  do  not 
need  to  tell,  for  it  has  been  well  done  by  the  eminent 
secretary  of  the  Peace  Society,  the  story  of  the  long 
campaign  of  education,  by  book  and  pamphlet  and 
lecture  and  convention  and  what  is  to-day  the  ablest 
international  journal  in  the  world,  by  which  the 
great  cause  of  the  world's  peace  and  order  has  been 
promoted  here  in  Boston.  From  that  Christmas  time, 
in  1815,  to  this  Independence  Day,  in  1903,  devotion  and 
zeal  have  never  nagged,  and  our  leadership  has  never 
been  lost.  Among  the  twenty-two  members  of  the 
original  society,  formed  in  Channing's  study,  were  the 
governor  of  Massachusetts  and  the  president  of  Harvard 
College.  Within  four  years  the  membership  rose  to  a 
thousand;  and  among  those  in  the  ranks  from  1815  to 
the  present  have  been  the  noblest  spirits  of  the  city  and 
the  state. 

Out  of  its  midst  came  the  impulse  to  the  great  Inter- 
national Peace  Congresses  in  Europe  in  the  middle  of 
the  last  century.  The  London  Congress  of  1843  sprang 


58  THE  PRINCIPLES   OF  THE  FOUNDERS 

from  its  suggestion;  and  this  was  the  precursor  of  the 
memorable  series  a  few  years  afterwards.  These  Con- 
gresses, the  first  at  Brussels  in  1848,  the  second  at  Paris, 
under  the  presidency  of  Victor  Hugo,  and  with  an  at- 
tendance of  two  thousand  persons,  in  1849,  and  others 
at  Frankfort  and  London,  registered  the  high-water 
mark  of  the  Peace  movement,  a  mark  which  now, 
as  the  new  century  opens,  it  is  our  duty  —  let  it  be 
our  high  resolve — to  leave  far  behind.  Of  the  twenty 
delegates  from  the  United  States  at  the  great  Paris 
Congress,  thirteen  were  from  Massachusetts  ;  of  the 
half  hundred  at  London,  in  1851,  one-fourth  were  from 
Massachusetts.  Much  more  significant,  it  was  from  a 
Massachusetts  man  that  the  impulse  to  these  historic 
International  Congresses  came.  Elihu  Burritt — vener- 
able name  —  was  the  original  and  the  chief  organizing 
force  ;  and  his  word  at  Brussels,  at  Paris,  at  Frank- 
fort, at  London,  was  the  strong  constructive  word. 
"A  High  Court  of  Nations!" — that  was  always  his  one 
definite  demand,  in  "the  same  old  speech,"  as  Dr.  Hale 
used  to  denominate  his  own  speech  at  Mohonk  year 
after  year  demanding  the  "Permanent  International 
Tribunal " —  Elihu  Burritt's  own  term  also  —  which  the 
scoffers  told  him  he  would  not  live  to  see.  The  '  'Ameri- 
can "  proposition — that  was  what  the  Congresses  called 
Burritt's  plea  for  the  Court ;  and  American,  not 
Russian,  it  is,  — not  the  conception  of  the  Czar,  but  of 
Worcester  and  Channing  and  Sumner  and  Burritt, 
one  Massachusetts  citizen  after  another  speaking  it 
out.  Son  of  Connecticut,  it 'was  as  a  citizen  of  Massa- 
chusetts, his  home  at  the  heart  of  the  Commonwealth, 


THE  PRINCIPLES   OF  THE  FOUNDERS  59 

that  Elihu  Burritt  did  his  momentous  work  —  how 
momentous  few  seem  to  remember  —  for  the  peace  and 
better  organization  of  the  world.  It  was  in  England 
that  he  organized  the  "League  of  Universal  Brother- 
hood ";  but  it  was  in  Boston,  years  before,  that  he  gave 
his  prophetic  address  on  ' '  Universal  Peace "  ;  in  our 
state  that  he  issued  year  after  year  his  ' '  Christian  Citi- 
zen," his  " Peace  Papers  to  the  People," and  his  "Olive 
Leaves."  The  effort — the  successful  effort — to  secure 
cheap  ocean  postage,  whose  results  in  bringing  people 
close  together  and  helping  scatter  the  fogs  of  ignorance, 
in  which  fears  and  jealousies  and  strifes  are  born,  are 
incalculable,  was  the  effort  of  Elihu  Burritt.  Each 
bursting  mail-bag  on  the  "Cedric"  and  the  "Oceanic  " 
is  his  memorial ;  The  Hague  Tribunal  is  his  memorial. 
But  where  is  Connecticut's  monument  to  this  great 
servant?  Where  is  ours?  When  the  last  brigadier  has 
had  his  bronze,  and  the  last  commodore,  may  we  not 
hope  for  it  ? 

The  labors  of  men  associated  with  our  Peace  Society 
have  done  more  than  any  other  to  create  the  spirit 
which  has  made  America's  record  in  international 
arbitration  the  proudest  in  the  world.  The  now  great 
and  influential  International  Law  Association  grew 
from  its  initiative.  It  has  worked  steadily  for  two 
generations  for  the  tribunal  finally  created  at  The 
Hague  ;  and  at  its  initiative  the  Massachusetts  Legisla- 
ture at  its  last  session  unanimously  passed  a  resolution 
asking  our  government  to  cooperate  with  the  govern- 
ments of  Europe  in  establishing  a  stated  International 
Congress,  from  which  in  the  fulness  of  time  it  is  hoped 


60  THE  PRINCIPLES  OF  THE  FOUNDERS 

will  develop  the  organization  which  will  perform  in 
some  manner  for  the  world  legislatively  the  functions 
performed  judicially  by  The  Hague  Tribunal.  At  The 
Hague  Conference  itself,  no  delegation  achieved  more 
than  that  of  the  United  States.  Its  members  have 
borne  witness  that  their  strength  and  influence  were 
due  largely  to  the  strong  support  and  the  earnestness 
of  public  opinion  here.  No  meetings  in  behalf  of  the 
cause  in  those  critical  days  were  so  important  as  those 
here  in  Boston  ;  and  no  individual  American  did  so 
much  as  Boston's  grand  old  man,  Edward  Everett  Hale, 
who,  going  up  and  down  the  country,  working  with 
voice  and  pen,  speaking  often  three  times  a  day,  made 
younger  men  blush  by  his  untiring  energy  and  devotion. 
Such  briefly  is  the  record  of  the  constructive  services 
of  our  Commonwealth  and  city  in  behalf  of  the  world's 
peace  and  order.  Surely  there  is  not  in  our  proud 
history  any  prouder  chapter  ;  and  surely  if,  as  we  are 
encouraged  to  hope,  the  International  Peace  Congress 
should  next  year  honor  the  United  States  by  making  it 
the  place  of  its  session,  no  city  has  higher  claim  and 
title  to  its  tabernacle  than  the  city  of  Sumner  and 
Charming  and  Samuel  Adams.  Should  it  come  to  us 
here,  its  word  would  be  but  another  word  of  the  great 
democratic  message  of  the  "Father  of  the  American 
Revolution."  By  fortunate  fatality,  the  name,  Robert 
Treat  Paine,  borne  by  the  president  now  and  for  many 
years  of  the  American  Peace  Society,  is  the  same  borne 
by  one  of  the  Massachusetts  signers  of  the  Declaration 
of  Independence ;  and  the  ideal  and  purpose  for  human- 
ity of  the  Peace  movement  in  the  world  is  at  its  heart 


THE  PRINCIPLES   OF  THE  FOUNDERS  61 

the  same  which  animated  Jefferson  and  Washington 
and  those  who  labored  with  them,  whose  memory  we 
celebrate  to-day. 

What  are  we  doing  to  make  war  to-morrow  and  the 
next  day  difficult  and  unlikely  ?  What  are  we  doing 
to  invite  it  —  to  feed  the  jealousy,  resentment  and  dis- 
trust which  threaten  it  and  make  it  easy  ?  Nations, 
like  men,  gain  slowly  a  true  sense  of  values,  of  rela- 
tions, of  fitness,  of  cause  and  effect.  Half  of  our 
people  fail  to  see  that,  when  nations  themselves  prac- 
tice lynch  law,  they  should  expect  to  see  lynch  law 
among  their  people  and  lawlessness  in  their  great 
corporations,  among  their  workers,  and  in  their  city 
halls.  Sanction  the  torture  of  men  by  your  soldiers  at 
the  antipodes,  apologize  for  it,  stigmatize  the  damna- 
tion of  it,  and  to-morrow  your  fellow-citizens,  with  the 
sheriff's  privity  and  parson's  benediction,  shall  be  burn- 
ing men  in  your  back-yard.  As  a  nation  we  have  not 
yet  learned  the  unfitness,  the  irritation  to  the  sister 
nation,  party  to  the  contention,  of  appointing  our  noto- 
riously defiant,  declared  and  committed  men  to  place 
upon  arbitration  commissions  —  as  in  the  Alaska  Boun- 
dary case. 

Most  of  our  people  fail  to  see  that  hah3  of  our  tempta- 
tion to  militarism  and  a  great  navy  comes  from  the 
prostitution  of  our  vaunted  Monroe  Doctrine  to  the  pur- 
poses of  a  dog-in-the-manger  commercialism ;  half  of 
the  rest  is  the  penalty  of  our  own  deed  in  the  Pacific, 
from  whose  consequences  as  well  as  guilt  a  manly  rep- 
aration would  go  far  to  free  us.  What  was  our  Mon- 
roe Doctrine  for  ?  What  were  Monroe  and  John  Quincy 


62  THE  PRINCIPLES   OF  THE  FOUNDERS 

Adams  thinking  about  in  1823  ?  They  were  simply 
planning  how  to  save  the  little  South  American  repub- 
lics from  the  incursions  of  three  or  four  European 
despotisms,  and  give  them  a  chance  in  their  political 
experiment.  But  the  conditions  of  1823  have  utterly 
changed.  I  could  not  describe  the  change  so  well  as 
Whitelaw  Eeid  described  it  in  his  speech  at  Yale 
University  a  fortnight  ago,  in  which,  reflecting  upon 
the  general  ignorance  of  the  origin  and  history  of  the 
Monroe  Doctrine,  he  said  of  its  condition  to-day  :  "It 
resembles  that  of  a  long-neglected  barrel  around  which 
has  accumulated  the  debris  of  years.  The  hoops,  the 
thing  that  made  it  a  barrel,  have  dropped  away  ;  only 
the  pressure  of  the  debris  outside  holds  the  staves 
together."  So  it  is.  The  Secretary  of  the  Navy 
bluntly  said  to  the  students  at  Harvard,  a  month  before, 
that  the  doctrine  had  lost  its  "political  significance " — 
the  only  worthy  or  real  significance  it  ever  had  ;  yet  in 
behalf  of  some  "significance"  of  the  doctrine,  which 
he  did  not  undertake  to  define,  he  boasted  that  the 
Navy,  although  he  remarked  that  the  people  had 
probably  not  observed  it  —  and  it  is  edifying  to  note 
this  joyful  independence  of  the  people's  knowledge  on 
the  part  of  a  powerful  branch  of  service  in  our 
democracy  —  was  making  an  impressive  demonstration 
in  the  Caribbean  waters  a  central  feature  of  its  regu- 
lar "policy."  We  hear  the  refusal  of  permission  to 
the  grant  of  an  island  in  the  West  Indies  to  Germany 
defended  on  the  ground  that  it  would  be  a  menace  to 
us  in  case  of  war  ;  the  natural  commercial  and  construc- 
tive needs  of  a  great  people  are  made  to  yield  to  con- 


THE  PRINCIPLES  OF  THE  FOUNDERS  63 

siderations  of  some  possible  contingency  of  war.  Mean- 
time, South  America  is  an  almost  empty  continent,  of 
limitless  resources  and  invitations,  in  a  crowded  world  ; 
and  what  sensible  American,  free  from  political  supersti- 
tion and  national  greed,  does  not  know  that  Englishmen 
and  Frenchmen  and  Germans  are  as  good  as  Portuguese 
or  Spaniards,  that  the  interests  of  law  and  liberty  and 
progress  to-day  are,  mildly  speaking,  equally  safe  in 
their  hands,  and  that  if,  in  some  vicissitude  or  fluctuation 
of  political  fortune,  a  hundred  millions  of  them  should 
pour  into  Venezuela  and  Brazil  and  ground  their  insti- 
tutions there,  it  would  be  a  blessing  to  the  world  ?  In 
a  word,  1903  is  not  1823  ;  the  theory  any  longer  of  a 
world  of  two  hemispheres,  for  political  purposes  or  any 
other,  breaks  down  at  every  point,  tempts  us  to  mon- 
strous and  grotesque  iniquities  and  wastes,  and  accuses 
our  common  sense.  The  ocean  is  not  now  a  barrier, 
but  a  bridge  ;  and  we  have  precisely  the  obligations, 
and  no  other,  to  Paraguay  and  Patagonia,  which  we 
have  to  Holland,  Turkey  and  Japan.  This,  I  think, 
is  what  John  Quincy  Adams  —  more  than  James  Mon- 
roe, the  father  of  the  Monroe  Doctrine  —  would  say  if 
he  were  back  in  Faneuil  Hall,  where  his  portrait  looks 
down  upon  us.  He  would  tell  us  to  clear  our  minds  of 
cant ;  he  would  tell  us,  with  Lowell,  that  new  occa- 
sions teach  new  duties  ;  he  would  tell  us,  with  Emer- 
son, to 

bid  the  broad  Atlantic  roll, 

A  ferry  of  the  free,  — 

since  a  ferry  is  what  it  now  is  and  ought  to  be.  While 
he  was  yet  with  us  he  said  :  * '  Let  it  be  impressed 


64  THE  PRINCIPLES   OF  THE  FOUNDERS 

upon  the  heart  of  every  one  of  you,  impress  it  upon 
the  minds  of  your  children,  that  the  total  abolition  of 
war  on  earth  is  entirely  dependent  on  man's  own  will 
—  the  ills  of  war  are  all  of  his  own  creation"  ;  and 
were  he  with  us  to-day,  I  think  he  would  add  that  the 
first  condition  of  keeping  out  of  war  is  to  face  the  facts, 
and  that  if  we  choose  to  go  on  living  as  if  it  were  still 
1823,  multiplying  battleships  upon  that  basis  and  getting 
into  miserable  wars  as  the  natural  and  necessary  result, 
the  fault  will  not  be  with  our  stars,  but  with  ourselves. 
One  hundred  and  one  years  ago,  the  Fourth  of  July 
oration  in  this  place  was  given  by  the  father  of  Ralph 
Waldo  Emerson.  One  hundred  years  ago  this  year, 
Kalph  Waldo  Emerson  was  born.  We  cannot  forget 
here  the  sacred  and  oracular  centennial.  Emerson 
has  illuminated  for  us  as  no  other  the  natural  and 
inalienable  rights  of  man,  the  principles  of  the  found- 
ers of  the  republic,  and  the  high  and  holy  standards 
ordained  for  us  here  in  his  city  and  ours  by  her  noble 
history  and  traditions.  Our  whole  great  group  of  Mas- 
sachusetts poets,  Emerson,  Bryant,  Whittier,  Holmes, 
Longfellow  and  Lowell,  have  sung  together  the  song  of 
peace  and  order  and  humanity ;  all  alike  have  ceased 
to  be  quoted  for  our  national  purposes  in  the  last  five 
years.  Sumner  well  said  that  the  highest  value  of  the 
arsenal  at  Springfield  will  ever  be  in  the  fact  that  it 
inspired  the  verse  of  Longfellow  : 

Were  half  the  power  that  fills  the  world  with  terror, 
Were  half  the  wealth  bestowed  on  camps  and  courts, 

Given  to  redeem  the  human  mind  from  error, 
There  were  no  need  of  arsenals  or  forts. 


THE  PRINCIPLES  OF  THE  FOUNDERS  65 

It  was  Whittier  who  greeted  in  most  prophetic  strain 
the  Peace  Convention  at  Brussels.  It  was  Lowell  who 
smote  with  loftiest  spirit  the  indulgence  of  any  patriot- 
ism which  blinds  the  patriot  to  his  duties  to  humanity. 

Where'er  a  single  slave  doth  pine, 

Where'er  one  man  may  help  another,  — 
Thank  God  for  such  a  birthright,  brother,  — 

That  spot  of  earth  is  thine  and  mine  ! 

There  is  the  true  man's  birthplace  grand  ; 

His  is  a  world-wide  fatherland  ! 

But  it  was  Emerson  who  put  into  words  most  power- 
ful our  obligations  as  Americans  and  as  men.  He  paid 
the  most  memorable  tribute  ever  paid  in  a  single 
phrase  to  the  Declaration  of  Independence.  When 
Rufus  Choate,  speaking  in  the  spirit  which  has  again 
become  fashionable  among  us  in  this  latest  time, 
slurred  the  Declaration  as  a  mass  of  ' '  glittering  gener- 
alities," Emerson  took  up  the  taunt  with  quick  resent- 
ment and  exclaimed  :  * ' '  Glittering  generalities ! '  Say 
rather,  Blazing  ubiquities ! "  Who  had  such  faith 
as  he  in  the  destiny  of  the  republic,  who  watched  so 
anxiously  its  fortune,  who  felt  so  buoyantly  its  oppor- 
tunities, who  was  so  sensible  of  its  world  power,  and 
who  rebuked  so  plainly  its  misuse  of  power?  It  seems 
as  if  those  famous  old  Fourth  of  July  lines  of  his  were 
written  for  us  now : 

United  States !  the  ages  plead, — 
Present  and  Past,  in  under  song, — 

Go  put  your  creed  into  your  deed, 
Nor  speak  with  double  tongue. 


66  THE  PRINCIPLES   OF  THE  FOUNDERS 

For  sea  and  land  don't  understand, 

Uor  skies  without  a  frown 
See  rights  for  which  the  one  hand  fights 

By  the  other  cloven  down. 

Nations,  he  said,  die  of  suicide,  and  the  sign  of 
decay  is  want  of  thought.  He  dreaded  reliance  upon 
materialities  and  physical  force  instead  of  appeal  to 
the  spiritual  arm.  He  saw  "the  bankruptcy  of  the 
vulgar  musket- worship."  "Is  the  armed  man  the  only 
hero "  ?  he  asked.  It  was  in  Boston,  in  his  opening 
lecture  on  the  Philosophy  of  History,  in  1836,  that  he 
urged  that  our  histories,  then  so  largely  monopolized  by 
the  chronicles  of  wars,  should  give  some  proper  prom- 
inence to  "other  of  man's  social  relations  besides  his 
conspiracies  to  stab  and  steal."  It  was  in  Boston  that 
he  gave  first  that  noble  address  on  War,  which  every 
Boston  citizen  and  every  American  should  keep  ever  on 
his  table.  "War,  to  sane  men  at  the  present  day," 
he  said,  "begins  to  look  like  an  epidemic  insanity, 
breaking  out  here  and  there  like  the  cholera  or  influ- 
enza, infecting  men's  brains  instead  of  their  bowels." 
"War  is  fratricide,"  and  "sympathy  with  it  is  a  juve- 
nile and  temporary  state."  "Would  not  love  answer 
the  same  end,  or  even  a  better  "  ?  He  rejoiced  at  the 
proposition  in  Boston  in  his  time  of  the  Congress  of 
Nations  ;  he  rejoiced  that  the  movement  began  here. 
"Not  in  a  feudal  Europe,"  he  exclaimed,  "but  in  this 
broad  America  of  God  and  man,  —  here  we  ask,  Shall 
it  be  War,  or  shall  it  be  Peace  "  ? 

Boston  has  as  yet  found  no  place  for  a  monument  to 
her  greatest  son,  although  she  has  reared  statues  of 


, : 


THE   PRINCIPLES  OF   THE  FOUNDERS  67 

General  Glover  and  Colonel  Cass.  But  Emerson  can 
wait.  He  honored  Boston  by  naming  the  noble  poem 
in  which  he  chants  God's  call  and  revelation  to  the 
founders  of  New  England  "The  Boston  Hymn."  The 
poem  " Boston"  is  at  once  a  celebration  of  the  spirit 
of  the  Revolution  and  of  this  "  darling  town  of  ours  "  ; 
and  the  loyal  and  loving  lecture  on  ' '  Boston "  is  an 
appeal  like  that  of  Demosthenes,  that  reverence  for  a 
noble  past  shall  be  the  inspiration  of  as  noble  days  to 
come.  "This  town  of  Boston  has  a  history.  ...  It 
is  a  seat  of  humanity,  of  men  of  principle,  obeying  a 
sentiment ;  so  that  its  annals  are  great  historical  lines, 
inextricably  national,  part  of  the  history  of  political 
liberty.  .  .  .  What  public  souls  have  lived  here,  what 
social  benefactors  ! "  He  believed  proudly  that  this  was 
"the  town  which  was  appointed  in  the  destiny  of 
nations  to  lead  the  civilization  of  North  America "  ; 
but  he  knew  that  she  would  continue  to  "teach  the 
teachers  and  rule  the  rulers  of  America  "  only  so  long 
as  she  ' '  cleaves  to  her  liberty,  her  education,  and  her 
spiritual  faith."  She  "owes  her  existence  and  her 
power  to  principles  not  of  yesterday "  ;  and  to  these 
principles  it  is  her  vocation  to  continue  to  witness. 
"Let  her  stand  fast  by  herself!"  "Let  every  child 
that  is  born  of  her  and  every  child  of  her  adoption  see 
to  it  to  keep  the  name  of  Boston  as  clean  as  the  sun  "  ; 
and  the  high  pledge  of  that  is  the  prayer  with  which 
the  ' '  Boston  "  lecture  and  the  ' '  Boston  "  poem  alike 
conclude  :  "As  with  our  fathers,  so  God  be  with  us  !  " 
It  was  an  auspicious  coincidence  by  which  at  the 
same  time  that  we  celebrated  the  centennial  of  Emerson 


68  THE   PRINCIPLES  OF  THE  FOUNDERS 

we  celebrated  the  centennial  of  the  beginning  of  Chan- 
ning's  ministry  in  Boston  and  dedicated  his  statue. 
The  president  of  our  great  university  did  not  fail  to 
emphasize  at  the  dedication  the  standards  of  political 
morality  which  Channing  set  up,  from  which  in  certain 
respects  the  country  has  recently  fallen  away.  "  Chan- 
ning, "  he  said,  "  taught  that  no  real  good  can  come 
through  violence,  injustice,  greed,  and  the  inculcation 
of  hatred  and  enmities,  or  of  suspicions  and  contempts. 
He  believed  that  public  well-being  can  be  promoted 
only  through  public  justice,  freedom,  peace,  and  good- 
will among  men.  He  never  could  have  imagined  that 
there  would  be  an  outburst  in  his  dear  country,  grown 
rich  and  strong,  of  such  doctrines  as  that  the  might  of 
arms  or  possessions  or  majorities  make  right ;  that  a 
superior  civilization  may  rightly  force  itself  on  an 
inferior  by  wholesale  killing,  hurting,  and  impoverish- 
ing ;  that  an  extension  of  commerce  or  of  missionary 
activities  justifies  war ;  that  the  example  of  imperial 
Kome  is  an  instructive  one  for  republican  America; 
and  that  the  right  to  liberty  and  the  brotherhood  of 
man  are  obsolete  sentimentalities."  Public  justice, 
freedom,  peace,  and  good-will  among  men,  political 
morality,  —  thank  God  for  this  noble  figure,  gracious 
and  severe,  which  from  this  day  on  through  the  genera- 
tions is  to  stand  in  our  midst,  reminding  Boston  of  the 
sacred  principles  not  of  yesterday  to  which  she  owes 
her  existence  and  her  power !  No  preacher  and  no 
citizen  ever  taught  her  better  what  war  means,  what 
true  and  false  patriotism  are,  what  the  men  are  and 
the  deeds  which  it  becomes  a  truly  enlightened  com- 


THE  PRINCIPLES  OF  THE  FOUNDERS  69 

munity  to  celebrate,  what  constitutes  the  true  grandeur 
of  nations,  and  what  this  nation  and  the  world  might 
be  if  Christian  ministers  and  Christian  churches  would 
combine  to  act  on  Christian  principles.  Demosthenes' 
oration  on  "The  Crown"  was  a  proud  review  of  his 
own  public  life,  to  answer  those  who  would  refuse  him 
the  golden  crown  which  had  been  proposed  as  a  recogni- 
tion and  reward  of  his  great  services.  Could  we  think 
Athenian  usage  into  Boston,  and  think  philippics 
into  the  mouth  of  the  saintly  Charming,  it  were  easy 
to  summon  the  stirring  rehearsal  by  which  he  would 
shame  a  Commonwealth  which  makes  illustrious  citi- 
zens wait  for  their  crown  while  she  dots  a  hundred 
commons  with  bronze  corporals  and  colonels. 

By  another  didactic  coincidence,  the  month  which 
began  here  with  the  dedication  of  the  statue  of  Chan- 
ning  ended  with  the  dedication  of  the  statue  of  General 
Hooker.  The  one  had  no  official  recognition,  had  little 
public  notice,  was  in  plainness  and  quiet  by  the  few. 
For  the  other,  every  public  building  blazed,  every  flag 
fluttered,  every  shop  was  closed,  every  street  thronged, 
every  official  in  procession,  and  the  pavements  echoed 
the  tread  of  twenty  thousand  men. 

Do  we  criticise  this  honor  to  the  great  captain  of  the 
Civil  War  ?  We  rejoice  in  it.  We  exult  in  the  memo- 
ries of  Gettysburg  and  of  Bunker  Hill.  The  republic 
honors  her  chivalric  soldiers.  There  have  been  right- 
eous and  necessary  wars.  "The  cause  of  peace,"  said 
Emerson,  '  <  is  not  the  cause  of  cowardice.  If  peace  is 
sought  to  be  defended  or  preserved  for  the  safety  of 
the  luxurious  and  the  timid,  it  is  a  sham,  and  the 


70  THE  PRINCIPLES  OF  THE   FOUNDERS 

peace  will  be  base ;  war  is  better.  If  peace  is  to  be 
maintained,  it  must  be  by  brave  men,  who  have  come  up 
to  the  same  height  as  the  hero,  but  who  have  gone  one 
step  beyond  the  hero  !  "  Howells  has  told  us  that  there 
are  greater  words  than  patriotism,  and  among  them  are 
civilization  and  humanity.  So  there  are  greater  words 
than  peace,  and  among  them  are  justice  and  honor. 
Even  the  wisdom  which  is  from  above  —  so  St.  James 
preached,  and  so  I  believe — is  first  pure,  and  then  peace- 
able. As  lovers  of  our  country,  we  honor  General 
Hooker  as  its  brave  defender.  As  haters  of  the  war 
spirit,  we  honor  him  for  hating  it.  He  is  the  standing 
rebuke  of  every  swaggerer  and  ruffler,  and  of  every 
battlefield  save  that  of  sternest  duty.  His  famous  ex- 
clamation: ''Fighting  Joe  Hooker  sounds  to  me  like 
Fighting  Fool !  "  will  go  ringing  down  our  history  with 
Sherman's  * '  War  is  hell ! "  What  I  say  is  that  Hooker's 
services  for  America,  for  good  citizenship,  for  pure 
patriotism,  for  high  political  inspiration  and  imperative, 
as  compared  with  Channing's,  were  but  as  one  to  a 
thousand,  and  that  the  degree  and  manner  of  our  recog- 
nition of  the  two  are  the  measure  of  our  poor  estimate 
of  values  and  the  rudeness  of  our  civilization  up  to  date. 
By  yet  another  eloquent  coincidence,  just  as  the  great 
military  procession  leaves  us,  there  enters  the  city  the 
greatest  host  of  teachers  which  has  ever  gathered  in  our 
history,  or  in  human  history.  Boston  welcomes  them 
to  her  heart  of  hearts.  Lift  up  your  heads,  0  ye  gates; 
even  lift  them  up,  ye  everlasting  doors !  And  learn, 
0  beautiful,  our  country,  —  through  whatever  falls  or 
stumblings,  still  ever  the  great  centre  of  our  hope,  our 


THE  PRINCIPLES  OF  THE  FOUNDERS  71 

confidence  and  our  devotion,  —  learn  where  to  look  for 
the  better  heart  and  mind  and  the  sure  salvation. 

"  Let  the  soldier  be  abroad  if  he  will,"  —  so  exclaimed 
Lord  Brougham  seventy  years  ago ; —  * '  he  can  do  nothing 
in  this  age.  There  is  another  personage,  a  personage 
less  imposing  in  the  eyes  of  some  :  the  schoolmaster  is 
abroad,  and  I  trust  to  him,  armed  with  the  primer, 
against  the  soldier  in  full  military  array."  The  school- 
master is  abroad ! — and  the  schoolmaster  means  reason 
and  peace.  By  happy  parable,  the  very  room  in  the  old 
house  on  Beacon  street  in  which  the  president  of  this 
great  convention,  the  president  of  Harvard  University, 
was  born  is  to-day  the  office  of  the  American  Peace 
Society.  Every  public  school  in  the  land  shall  soon  be 
a  peace  society.  The  teacher  everywhere  begins  to  ask : 
Whereto  this  wickedness  and  waste  ?  In  Chicago  the 
teachers  of  the  public  schools  league  themselves  to- 
gether and  say  to  the  City  Hall :  Make  the  rogues  pay 
their  honest  taxes,  and  you  can  pay  us  honest  wages ; — 
and,  to  prove  their  thesis,  themselves  bring  suit  against 
the  rogues,  and  turn  two  million  dollars  into  the  treas- 
ury. Now,  say  they,  force  your  street  railways  to 
make  proper  payment  for  their  franchises,  and  turn 
in  ten  millions  more.  Thus,  in  that  great  city,  the 
teacher  leads  in  the  constructive  way.  "More  Money 
for  the  Public  Schools  "  President  Eliot  writes  a  whole 
book  to  demand;  while  meantime  a  billion  dollars  are 
thrown  away  in  reckless  war.  The  cost  of  one  great 
battleship  would  build  the  whole  hundred  buildings  of 
Harvard  University,  with  a  million  dollars  to  spare ; 
while  the  battleship,  if  perhaps  it  serve  us  well,  —  with 


72  THE  PRINCIPLES  OF  THE  FOUNDERS 

Christ's  eyes  we  should  see  it  clearer,  —  may  by  new 
invention  be  made  junk  to-morrow ;  if  it  serve  us  ill, 
will  help  us  into  some  collision  from  which,  without  it, 
Christian  courtesy  and  common  sense  would  probably 
have  saved  us.  Surely  we  do  not  need  much  higher 
mathematics  nor  much  higher  morals  than  those  already 
current  in  our  schools  to  put  this  and  that  together. 
The  schoolmaster  will  put  them  together ;  and  to-mor- 
row the  result  shall  find  place  in  the  curriculum. 

"The  only  substitute  for  a  strong  police  in  a  free 
country,"  wrote  President  Dwight,  a  hundred  years 
ago,  "is  a  more  virtuous  and  thorough  education  of 
children."  "We  must,"  said  Emerson,  "supersede 
politics  by  education."  The  only  way  to  save  the  bil- 
lions wasted  in  wicked  wars  is  to  spend  them  on  con- 
structive things ;  and  the  time  has  come  for  the  teachers 
of  America  to  see  and  with  power  to  say,  in  presence 
of  the  nation's  awful  needs,  that  a  civilization  which 
has  come  so  far  as  to  be  able  to  produce  and  understand 
a  Lincoln  and  an  Emerson  is,  in  spending  a  billion 
dollars  as  we  have  spent  our  last,  sinning  against  its 
own  light  and  against  humanity,  —  if  it  persists  in 
such  policies,  sinning  against  the  Holy  Ghost.  The 
Baroness  von  Suttner,  the  wise  and  tactful  author  of 
"Lay  Down  Your  Arms  !  "  the  book  which  has  gone  to 
the  hearts  of  men  and  women  in  our  time  more  pene- 
tratingly than  any  other  impeachment  of  the  war  sys- 
tem, has  been  credited  in  Europe  with  the  power  "  to 
convert  diplomats  in  a  few  weeks  into  human  beings." 
There  are  few  things  for  which  America  has  greater 
reason  to  be  proud  than  that  her  own  diplomats,  from 


THE  PRINCIPLES  OF  THE  FOUNDERS  73 

the  time  of  Benjamin  Franklin  and  John  Jay  to  the  time 
of  John  W.  Foster  and  Andrew  D.  White,  have  been 
exerting  in  eminent  degree  precisely  that  same  power. 
Let  the  teachers  of  America,  the  women  of  America, 
and  the  churches  of  America  once  highly  resolve  to- 
gether that  this  republic  shall  henceforth  act  always 
like  a  human  being  to  human  beings,  and  that  thing 
shall  surely  come  to  pass.  And  where  is  the  fitting 
place  for  that  triune  consecration  but  this  home  of 
Horace  Mann,  of  Lucy  Stone,  and  of  Channing  ?  Let 
it  begin  here  !  The  war  spirit  indeed  is  doomed.  Its 
momentary  appearance  among  ourselves  is  an  anachro- 
nism. "All  history,"  says  Emerson,  "is  the  decline  of 
war,  though  the  slow  decline."  There  was  not  half  so 
much  war  in  the  world  in  the  nineteenth  century  as 
in  the  eighteenth.  Let  every  teacher  in  the  school 
and  every  faithful  man  and  woman  in  the  home  unite 
in  the  decree  that  this  century's  record  shall  be  brighter 
still.  Let  this  republic  be  indeed  the  prime  world  power 
of  a  new  era,  and  dare,  as  Jefferson  aspired,  ' '  to  legis- 
late as  if  eternal  peace  were  at  hand."  And  let  our 
own  beloved  city  still  revere  with  Emerson,  and  still 
valiantly  obey,  humbly  recognizing  its  severe  condition, 
the  destiny  which  appointed  it  to  lead  the  civilization 
of  the  continent,  the  high  and  holy  destiny  of  the  prin- 
ciples not  of  yesterday  to  which  it  owes  its  existence 
and  its  power. 


001  2o/ 


Cj-LLt. 


